After getting off the Yellow Breeches at 6:30 on Saturday, I drove only a couple hours before I was ready for dinner and a good night’s rest. Thanks to Hotwire.com, I found a very cheap hotel just off the interstate in Shithole, PA. You can’t find it on a map, but it's there. Just like every state seems to have a scenic Springfield or a charming Centerville, every state definitely has a Shithole. Or 10. Or 100. I say that with all due respect, having grown up in Troy, New Yor

Yellow Breeches, Full of stitches, Mammy sewed the buttons on. Daddy kicked me out of bed For sleeping with the breeches on. The source of the creek's name is uncertain, but it certainly is colorful. According to the Yellow Breeches Watershed Association, the name Yellow Breeches dates back to the 1700s, when it appeared on various deeds and maps. The origin of the silly song is unknown. No matter where the name came from, the Yellow Breeches is a fine fishing creek. After a

Lou Zambello and I had been waiting for the sulfur hatch to start, but it was now after 8:00, so we were wondering if the hatch would happen at all. The day had been very warm, so maybe that threw the bugs off. A few fish were rising sporadically. We each land a small one, but so far things were pretty quiet. A couple fisherman downstream of us sitting on rocks in the middle of the stream chatting away, waiting for the hatch to start. We could just hear their voices above th

If Pennsylvania is the bedrock of American fly fishing, that bedrock is folded and wrinkled like the fishing clothes stuffed into my luggage. Sandstone, shale and limestone create the landforms, and shape the watersheds and streambeds of the creeks (pronounced cricks) and runs (local vernacular for a faster stream) that hold brook trout, rainbows and some very sizable brown trout. Mud Run and Hickory Run My next stop was the Poconos, where my college friend (and co-author) Ed

The Beaverkill earned its well-deserved fame during the railroad era, when the fabled Ontario & Western (O&W) Railway ran from New York City through Roscoe, New York. Easy access to this (then) remote and wild river drew pioneers like Theodore Gordon, who introduced the dry fly to American fishing. Gordon wrote articles that further popularized the area, thereby creating disciples who established the tradition of Catskill flies. One fine fisherman who loved the Beaverkill was

While making final plans for the Storied Waters tour, I was joking with friends that I had to be prepared for six weeks of bad timing. That would be just my luck: everyone telling me “you should have been here last week!” Those are seven words you hate to hear when you are fishing. Like backgammon and cribbage, fishing is a pleasing combination of strategy, skill and chance. Of course, fortune can fall either way, so it is best to keep your hopes high but your expectations in

On Monday, I gave a talk about the Storied Waters tour at Orvis headquarters in Arlington, Vermont to about 25 Orvis associates. Nearly everyone in the audience was a fly fisher and a reader of the fly fishing literature, of course, so the Q&A session was a good exchange of experience about fishing along my route and authors. I picked up some good contacts for help in Michigan and the Adirondacks, plus an offer to use a camp up in Maine off the Golden Road. I swapped books wi

After launching the Storied Water tour at Walden Pond, where Thoreau "lived deliberately" in 1845, I moved on to Manchester, Vermont where Charles F. Orvis founded the Orvis Company in 1856. It is funny to think of the two men as contemporaries. Thoreau never made it to Vermont to get casting lessons on the Battenkill. (He made it as far west as Mt. Greylock near Williamstown.) But Henry's ghost came along with me get some pointers from Pete Kutzer, the star of many Orvis cas

For those who took my last post seriously, I'm sorry I caused you heartache. No, the Storied Waters Tour is not postponed until February. And, no I didn't paint the house and remodel the downstairs bathroom this week. Nor did I halt climate change or eliminate racism this week. I wish I had. But I did make it through pretty much all of my real "honey do" list. The car is packed. My plans are confirmed. And I am heading south in a few moments. I plan to fish Walden Pond tonigh

NEW GLOUCESTER- Just hours after a festive send-off party yesterday, reality came crashing down on David Van Wie, forcing him to postpone the much anticipated Storied Waters Tour indefinitely due to a self-regenerating and ever-expanding “honey do” list. “Wow, I only have four days before I leave, and somehow the list just keeps getting longer,” said Van Wie. “I was cleaning up from the party and glanced over at the list. I was shocked to see that it had grown to five pages

What does one pack for a six-week fly-fishing and writing excursion? Good question. I do most of my fishing in the remote backcountry here in northern New England. I usually try to get as far away from the crowds as possible, so when packing to go fishing, I bring along everything I will need for two or three days away from civilization. If I don’t have it, I make do. This trip will be a bit different. If I forget something, I can always stop somewhere to buy it. So, I am no

My grandfather was a fly-fisherman. Born in 1875, Grampa Van Wie died in 1960 when I was three years old, so I don’t remember him at all. My father wasn’t much of a fisherman. He enjoyed boating, water-skiing and downhill skiing, but the fishing thing skipped a generation, I guess. Dad set me up with a spinning rod when I was a kid, but most of what I've learned, especially fly-fishing, was on my own. Fortunately, Grampa was also a talented amateur photographer. As such, he l

I'm no expert on the history of fly-fishing, nor on fishing literature or nature writing. I am certainly an interested, passionate student who is willing to share what I learn on the Storied Waters tour, which will be a total immersion in both fly-fishing our most famous waters and writings thereabout. (Let's hope this is a figurative immersion, not a literal one.) So where did all this writing about fishing begin? Way back in 1496, Dame Juliana Berners wrote A Treatise of Fi

40 days and 40 nights. That is approximately how long my Storied Waters trip will be. Let's hope that I have better weather than Noah. My itinerary is coming together nicely. I will be traveling through twelve states and one province. (Note to self: don’t forget your passport for crossing into Ontario). I expect to cast a line in at least nine different states and over two dozen different rivers, streams and ponds. That assumes that the weather cooperates- always a wild card.

Walden Pond is my first stop on the Storied Waters tour. I have yet to find any evidence that Henry David Thoreau fly-fished. In Walden, or Life in the Woods, he pontificates on pickerel and horned pout, tells of going “a-fishing” at midnight, and seems content to fish with worms. Hmmm. If Thoreau had been a fly-fisher, we would all know it. He would likely have filled several volumes on how fly-fishing is morally and spiritually superior to… well, you get the picture. We al

Opening Day of fishing is just around the corner. Here in Maine, the first day of “open water” fishing is April 1. Note that this is April Fools’ Day. Coincidence? I think not. I have always considered Opening Day to be a cruel April Fools' joke in northern New England, at least for a fly fisherman like me. Until recent years, my yard would still be under a foot of snow on April 1 with more in the woods. Even if the snow had melted by that date, the rivers and streams were u

My list of authors and books to read for The Storied Water Tour keeps growing and growing. Like Jack’s beanstalk, my pile of books will reach to the clouds before long. The more I read and research, the more fabulous writing I find. I have been taking books out of the library and buying used books on-line. I have a few on loan from friends and I scoured my own bookshelves for forgotten volumes. Right now, I have about nine books going at once. I’ll read one for an hour on the

The wooden screen door slammed as Guy strolled out to his car to fetch the book and slammed again a moment later as he came back into the cabin. He held up his copy of The Best of Corey Ford, waving it in the glow of the propane lights. The Boys of the Grant were sitting around the big table in Sam’s Cabin at the Dartmouth Grant in northern New Hampshire, sipping potent beverages after dinner, each waiting for someone else to get up to start the dishes. “It’s uncanny, I tell