She Made Fly Fishing an Art Form
This weekend, I came across Carrie Stevens' work in the oldest fly shop in America.
There is a small town two hours outside New York City that is obsessed with trout. It is called Livingston Manor and is considered the birthplace of American dry-fly fishing.
Six years ago, my wife and I bought a small, dilapidated farmhouse there. It was early 2020, and we were two weeks ahead of the historic pandemic bidding wars on every house within driving distance of the city.
I came across this town in the western Catskills, the way you found everything in early COVID, down in the algorithm abyss, via a post from The Livingston Manor Fly Fishing Club.
I grew up trout fishing with my family in Pennsylvania. My great-grandfather built a fishing cabin deep in the woods that still has no running water to this day. The Livingston Manor Fly Fishing Club was not anything like that cabin. They took fly fishing and made it aesthetic. The creative director in me was sold on the town in that moment.
Fly fishing has a long history here. The Willowemoc Creek, which has world-class trout fishing, runs right through downtown. More than a century ago, before the rail line disappeared, New Yorkers would rise before dawn, take the ferry across the Hudson, and ride the train all the way up here to fish by midday.
Trout is the soul of this place. I would go so far as to say that it is the town mascot. Every June, Main Street shuts down for the annual Trout Parade. Trout floats, trout costumes, it feels like a joyous ceremony to honor the fish.
This past May was filled with more work stress than usual, along with travel, projects, and the passing of a childhood friend. The Tyrpien Family was tired and burnt out. We tried the usual remedies of a millennial lesbian couple living in NYC. Binge watching Hacks. Taking our fifteen-year-old Yorkie, Stefan, to brunch. And damnit, not even a morning walk in Central Park was hitting as it should. We needed to up the dose. Perhaps it was time to give fishing a shot.
At the edge of Main Street, there is a shop called Dette Flies. It is the oldest family-run fly shop in America, started in 1928, and is still run by the family today.
If you have never been inside a fly shop, and we had not, Magdalena said it best when she whispered to me, “So is this just a craft store, but boy?”
Little feathers, big feathers, colorful feathers. An adorable little workbench with precious little tools for tying flies, used to catch the trout.
Dette’s has a bookshelf, a few rows of mostly the books you would expect at a family-run fishing supply store. But I found myself a treasure. A book about Carrie G. Stevens.
Carrie Gertrude Stevens was a milliner in Upper Dam, Maine, a town in the woods up in the Rangeley Lakes. For most of her life, that was her craft, making hats.
Then, in 1924, at the age of 42, she tied her first fly. She was self-taught, and she tied it in her bare hands, the way you would thread a needle. She cast it into the water and caught a six-pound, thirteen-ounce brook trout. It took second prize in Field and Stream, and her fly-tying business was born.
She not only tied the existing patterns but also designed her own. Her most famous is the Gray Ghost, which anglers still tie a hundred years later. Her trademark was the fly's head, finished with a contrasting band of thread. A black head with a red band, or a red head with a black band. It is how her originals are authenticated today.
She never left the state of Maine, but her flies went around the world. Her clients even included President Herbert Hoover. One of the employees at Dette’s told me he has seen her originals go for thousands of dollars. She was so monumental in her craft that, after she died, the governor of Maine named a day after her. There is something about a woman excelling at a craft within a field run by men, in the woods of Maine, that makes me an immediate admirer of her and her work.
We left Dette’s with the absolute essentials of two women embarking on a new hobby: two t-shirts, a book, and a hat. I found us a spot on Waneta Lake, eight minutes outside downtown. I was told it was good fishing, and we could use your good-old bobber, hook, and worm rig, since Dette’s fly-fishing lessons were all booked for the weekend.
We set up two folding chairs on the bank of the lake. Magdalena kept referring to her bobber as a Pokémon Ball, obviously the technical name. Stefan is asleep on my lap. Magdalena adjusts her new fishing hat and whips her Pokémon Ball and dangling worm upstream.
“Ooohhh, good cast, babe,” I tell her, as I set up eBay alerts for “Carrie G. Stevens Original Fly.” Somewhere out there is a fly she tied a hundred years ago. I would like to have one.
my grandma's small town of Preston, MN (on the Root River) also has an annual trout fest—love a small town that loves fishing haha