An Initial Encounter

My part of the history of the Beaverkill Trout Club began when I met Sally Parr.

Our Brooklyn-born fathers had grown up three blocks from each other, gone to Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, and joined the same fraternity, although 9 years apart.

They kept in touch over the years. In 1961 they arranged for our families to meet at the Parrs’ house in Essex Fells, New Jersey. The occasion was prompted because Sally’s older brother, Grant, and I were bound in the fall for Wesleyan University, and Sally for Wellesley College, where Sally’s mother graduated. (How Sally and Grant ended up in the same class is a story for another time).

I was curious about, but did not particularly care for, Sally. She made it plain enough that the feeling, or lack thereof, was more or less mutual, but all that changed quickly.

Two years later found us on summer recess in an otherwise empty New York City subway car on the way to an all-Beethoven concert at Lewisohn Stadium in the Bronx. I got down on one knee in the subway car and proposed marriage to her. She accepted, but with her usual prudence imposed some conditions.

The stated conditions were that we had to keep our engagement secret and that we had to feel the same way about each other when she graduated from Wellesley College. Unstated, but somehow known by me, was that I, like a prospective knight of the Round Table, had to pass tests and challenges. One of these was the Beaverkill Trout Club.

Sallying Forth Into The Wilds

Sally arranged for me to be her father’s guest at the Club. (Today I surmise that Sally’s parents discerned that Sally and I were getting along fairly well, in fact, very well, and had decided I merited a closer worthiness examination).

In any event, Sally was spending the summer in her parents’ Manhattan apartment learning Polish at Columbia University (another story).

Early in August 1963 on a hot and dry Friday afternoon, I contrived somehow to leave Larchmont early from my summer sailing instructor job, picked Sally up in Manhattan, and drove off under her guidance to the Beaverkill Valley on the southwestern slopes of the Catskill Plateau. A great adventure began, which continues to this day.

In 1963, the Route 17 four-lane divided highway did not reach all the way to Livingston Manor, and the trip, including a fair stretch on the Old Route 17, took close to four hours. What I remember most about that drive is how we kept going up and up and up until finally descending into a verdant valley through which ran the Beaverkill River.

When we arrived at the Beaverkill Trout Club, Helen Conklin, who managed the Club with her husband, John, and cooked the meals, announced that Mr. and Mrs. Parr had called to say they and Grant Parr would be driving up late, that we were to have dinner without them, and that dinner would be served in a little while, after Colonel Sykes and his daughter “came in” from fishing.

Sally and I went out onto the Farmhouse porch and sat down in surprisingly comfortable, weather-beaten oak rockers with wicker backs and seats, which seemed to me at least a hundred years old. (Forty-two years later they are still there, and still surprisingly comfortable, now presumably 140 years old).

It was a beautiful, golden, late afternoon in the shortening days of a very dry summer. The water level in the streambed was about as low as I have ever seen it since. In some places, there appeared to be no stream at all, just an expanse of dry, smooth, rounded stones forming a rugged path running from pool to pool and changing color from light gray to light blue in the gentle shadows of a growing twilight. The sound of the water was more of a trickle than a gurgle or rush. There was a forming evening hatch of benign insects moving mote-like across beams of fading yellow light. I was ridiculously young, still nineteen years old, and conversing with the woman I loved. I realized I had found Paradise.

A Knight Errant Appears

While chatting with Sally, my eyes caught motion far downstream. Two human figures emerged around a bend in the stream crunching along the stones, engaged in what Sally explained was “false casting,” that is, moving their rods back and forth to keep their fishing lines in the air, and drying their artificial flies at the tips of their lines, even while gradually walking up the stream. From moment to moment one or both would pause to let the line and fly fall to the surface of the water, rest there for a few moments and, when no trout struck, lift the line and fly from the surface and recommence false casting and walking up the stream. Eventually, as they worked their way through pools that Sally called the “Brush Pile” and the “Docking,” snatches of their conversation could be gleaned over the insect sounds starting to dominate the darkening twilight. There was a male voice and a female voice, apparently Colonel Sykes and his daughter.

I had never seen fly-fishing before, and found the curious process mechanically amazing and the apparent art strikingly beautiful. It looked easy to do, but I sensed it was not.

I was supposed to engage in this very activity the next day and began to wonder how I would fare. Nonetheless, I was thoroughly enjoying the evening, and Sally was having fun explaining to me what I was seeing and learning.

Helen Conklin came out on the porch and announced she was putting dinner on because she had to get home and could not wait further for Colonel Sykes and his daughter to “come in.”

“They’re coming in through the Docking now, Helen,” said Sally. “They should be here in a few more minutes.”

“Oh,” Helen responded, peering downstream and apparently catching sight of them. “Well, I don’t know ------ all right,” she said in a tone clearly intended to convey it was not all right, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Some minutes later, Colonel Sykes and his daughter came walking up the road carrying their rods with the tips pointed behind them, the recommended method as Sally explained, and passed by the porch.

The Voorhess farmhouse, taken in 1912 from the northerly bank of the Beaverkill at the bottom of “Home Pool.” The cows “coming home,” probably to the surviving downstream barn beyond the right-hand margin of the photograph, remind us of the dominant agricultural economy of the Beaverkill Valley in that era. The slate wagon landing and stone hitching post discernable beside the road at the left of the photograph, reminiscient of the 2-hour, horse-drawn trip from the railroad station in Livingston Manor, survive.

“No fish,” announced the Colonel without further ado. “We’ll get out of these waders and join you in the dining room,” he added with an air of command, somehow looking at once at Sally and me and his daughter. He then marched off toward what I eventually learned was the “Clubhouse,” where the men hung out, while his daughter crossed over the porch and went upstairs into what I learned was the old Voorhess “Farmhouse,” in which the women and families were allowed to stay at certain times of the fishing season.

I do not recall today all that much about Colonel Sykes’ appearance, except that he seemed in his seventies, that he was tall with a military bearing, a white, waxed moustache, and had a friendly but dominating air. He told stories end to end about what he had done in his life, which included a lot about hunting and fishing.

His daughter came to dinner in a khaki skirt and a white cotton sleeveless blouse. Her brown hair was long enough to be tied back with a string. My impression of her at the time was that she was quite old (probably all of 35, thinking about it today) and slightly mannish. From the vantage of age, I would rate her today as young and handsome, but not quite beautiful.

As the dinner courses came out I regressed into my childhood polite mode of being seen but not heard and speaking only when spoken to. Nonetheless, Colonel Sykes quickly discovered that I knew nothing about fly-fishing, but wanted to learn. He then commenced a lengthy and surprisingly riveting monologue on hydrology, ichthyology, entomology, anthropology, meteorology, astronomy, and physics, all in particular relation to trout and the catching thereof in the balance of nature. How he was able to ingest food while speaking so steadily, I do not recall.

By the end of dinner, just as Colonel Sykes was beginning to explain the finer points of what he considered the several, competing theories and practice of fly-casting, Mr. and Mrs. Parr and Sally’s brother Grant arrived, as well as another member and family. In the midst of confusion caused by these arrivals, the Colonel leaned toward me and spoke sotto voce, “Don’t worry, after breakfast I’ll personally teach you everything you need to know about casting in just a few minutes, there’s nothing to it.”

While I was not worried, I was appreciative, and thanked him. He nodded, as if returning a salute, and marched off.

Sally and her mother, Helene (always “Mrs. Parr”, then), went off to sleep somewhere in the Farmhouse, and Van (always “Mr. Parr”, then), Grant and I went to the Clubhouse. Probably after a drink or two, we found a bunk.

A Charge Is Passed

The next morning, at breakfast, with even more late-night arrivals, the dining room was a-buzz with conversation. Colonel Sykes had lost his audience of the night before, and was deep in conversation with his daughter.

Van Parr finished eating, announced that he would go over to the Clubhouse to find some waders and “set up” a rod for me, and that Grant and I should come over when finished eating.

Walking from the Farmhouse to the Clubhouse, there was at that time between the Clubhouse porch and the road a row of perhaps five large white pine trees ending at a wizened, broken apple tree at the edge of the parking area. The fishermen would lightly hook their flies into a low-lying limb of the pine nearest the parking area, run out the leaders and lines from their reels down to the backing, and loop a portion of the backing over another limb so that the line would be suspended over its entire length (perhaps 60 feet) like a clothesline. The purpose of this was to “relax” the line and leader out of its acquired kinks and turns, thus improving the cast.

Colonel Sykes was finishing this process, reeling in his “relaxed” line, his fly gently bumping along the ground over the grass and pine needles, and he intercepted me before I could reach the Clubhouse door.

Taking me by the elbow and leading me to the parking area beyond, he remarked that it was better to learn how to cast on land and that he would show me with his own rod. I sensed from his tone that I was being granted something special.

In any event, within the few minutes he had predicted the night before, I was initiated into the secret rites of the ancient casting society he had joined decades earlier.

“First, I will explain the entire process to you,” he said, looking at me intently. “To cast correctly and successfully, you will securely grasp the rod in your right hand with the rod parallel to the ground and the line fully extended on the ground before you, placing your right elbow firmly into the side of the body and keeping it there at all times,” he instructed. “In fact, when I was taught this method at the age of six,” he explained, “a rope was employed to keep the elbow in place, but I trust you are mature enough not to require such a prop to enforce discipline.”

I nodded in a non-committal way, and he continued in a measured, pedagogical manner. “Using the motion of the wrist alone, you will lift the tip of the rod in one continuous motion, stopping only when the rod, if it were the hand of a clock, reaches a position of one o’clock, and no further. This will cause the line to be lifted over its entire length from the ground, and to pass in a looping arc above your head, until it is fully extended behind you, parallel to the ground over its entire length. At that instant, the line will commence to drop to the ground and, at that same instant, and not a moment before, and again using the motion of the wrist alone, you will bring forward the tip of the rod in one continuous motion until it is once again parallel to ground and pointed toward the exact place you wish the fly to land. This forward motion will cause the line to pass once again in a looping arc over your head until it is fully extended, parallel to the ground, in front of you. At that instant, the line will start to drop to the ground, and at that instant, if this is a false cast, you will reiterate the process. If you decide that this cast will be for effect, however, you will do nothing, and the line and fly will drop gently to the ground, that is, in reality, of course, to the surface of the water.”

Then he looked at me intently, with his eyebrows lifted and finger pointed, and continued. “I have related all you need to know in order to cast perfectly. All the rest is practice.”

Resuming his pedagogical manner, he went on. “Now, I will myself demonstrate this for you, and then you, taking my rod in hand, will cast for yourself. Keep in mind that when I cast, after a lifetime of practice, I sense when the line is fully extended behind me. You, on the other hand, while practicing, may wish to turn your head so to follow the fly with your eyes to know when full extension of the line has been achieved.”

As he made his demonstration, I was able to see readily how his explanation actually described the process, and worked. When I tried it for myself, to my surprise and delight, it worked for me as well.

“Not bad,” he said, and then, raising his pointed index finger, repeated, “All the rest is practice.”

Colonel Sykes then took his rod back from me and, as he was reeling the line in, ended his short but effective instruction with a wistful observation: “You know, they say that you never forget the person who taught you how to cast. I remember who taught me how to cast, many years ago. It was Charlie Campbell. He was a Wall Street lawyer and a member of this Club, and he taught me just the way I just taught you, but with a rope around the elbow. Maybe you’ll remember me.”

With that he turned on his heel and walked up the road on his way to wherever he had decided to fish that morning.

I never saw him again. By the time we “came in” for noon dinner at the Club, he and his daughter had departed.

A Squire Apprentice

Ferdinand Van Siclen Parr Sr. and Jr. at Home Pool circa 1914. Father, gentleman from Brooklyn, is wearing hip waders, shortened three-button frock coat, high starched collar with black bow tie, felt hat with spare flies hooked into crown, wicker creel (obscured) strapped over left shoulder, net hung over right shoulder. Son is “wearing the earnest smile I came to learn was so typical of him while doing things he liked to do.

A few minutes after Colonel Sykes’ departure up the stream, Ferdinand Van Siclen Parr, Jr. (indeed, Sally’s father’s full name, and another story related to the Club), came out of the Clubhouse in full fishing attire with a pair of waders and fishing vest slung over his left arm and two rods grasped in his right hand.

“Well, Ed,” he said, “hop into these waders and vest, and I will show you how to cast, it’s really quite easy.”

I then revealed that his fellow member Sykes had just initiated me into the casting art, but that I was prepared, and would be gratified, to learn more about a subject I was finding at once intriguing and wonderful.

His face darkened, revealing discontent. “Well,” he said, “Sykes knows a lot about fishing, and he has his particular opinions, but I learned from my father, and he learned when he was a boy, just as Sykes did.” Then he paused, smiled and began again. “Show me what he taught you.”

Taking the rod he handed me, but without unreeling the line, I performed a dry run through the motions, repeating as best I recalled what Sykes had explained. “Well, said Van, managing a somewhat brighter smile, “it seems he taught, and you learned, pretty well the way the old timers did it. Certainly Charlie Campbell was a great fly fisher and I learned a lot from him as well. But did Sykes teach you how to run out the line, how to use arm and body motion to amplify the length and force of the cast, and how to manage the line with your left hand while casting and floating with your right hand? Did he teach you anything about where to cast, how to watch for a strike, and what to do when that happens?”

“None of that, Mr. Parr,” I answered truthfully, also sensing it was the answer he preferred.

“Well,” he said, now wearing the earnest smile I came to learn was so typical of him while doing things he liked to do, “Let’s go fishing.”

Then turning to the group of other fishermen getting ready, he announced, “O.K., boys, I’m going to take Ed down to the fast water below the Brush Pile, unless any of you has his heart set on it, and teach Ed how to fish.” Hearing remarks of assent, Van turned to me and said, “You have one of my father’s rods. Be careful when you walk with it to carry it with the tip behind you. That way, when you walk through brush and woods, you will avoid stubbing and breaking off the tip.”

While walking in a downstream direction on the road for perhaps 500 yards, Van breezily chattered on about how trout fishing formerly had been done exclusively the English way with “wet flies” (that is, artificial lures operating beneath the surface of the stream and imitating insects and other small aquatic life eaten by the trout); that American fishermen in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, most prominently in the Beaverkill Trout Club, had developed the “dry fly” (the same as wet flies, but designed to float on the surface of the water); that, in the summer with the stream low, most knowledgeable trout fishermen now preferred the dry fly method, casting upstream into the “fast” waters; that many modern trout fishermen claimed success with dry flies which “matched the [insect] hatch” of the season and the moment, but that he had not observed much of that success and often used a “Royal Coachman” dry fly which imitated no known insect of any sort (but some posited that in a former era, when the trout’s instincts evolved, there had been such an insect); that he had “tied on” to the “tippets” of his and my rods a Royal Coachman “variant,” called a “Quack Special” (another story, involving Beaverkill Trout Club member Leonard Quackenbush, father of Jane Quackenbush Lott Hollister and a grandfather of Steve Lott), which had a “hair wing” instead of a “feather wing”; that this “variant” cast and floated better, and was more durable than, the original dry Coachman design, seeing that he imagined it would take some time before I would learn to keep my “back cast” elevated, thus avoiding whipping, snapping, and breaking the fly against the many exposed, dry stones of the streambed at this season; and that, if I would but adhere to the “one o’clock” rule I mentioned had been given to me by Colonel Sykes and to him by Charlie Campbell, I would avoid this, but that nobody really followed that rule except by dint of concentration and the discipline of long practice.

Some parts of Van’s explanations seemed to match some parts of the previous night’s monologue by the Colonel. Even so, I felt adrift on a sea of endless and disordered information.

When we arrived at the bank of the stream, Van waded with me into the water and showed me how to unhook the fly from the “holder” near the reel, pull out the leader until the line was run out of the “guys” a foot or two from the tip of the rod, rapidly false casting with the right hand even while pulling out more and more line with the left hand and, finally, casting for effect upstream into moving water likely to be populated by trout. Then he explained that, while the fly was floating downstream back toward the caster, I was to keep the line “taut” by “stripping” the line back through the guys with the left hand, always vigilantly watching the fly to detect a strike. Finally, he mentioned that, in the event of a strike, I should firmly, but not violently, pull back on the rod, just as if I were commencing a cast, until I felt resistance, thus “setting” the hook.

Just as I reached the point of over-saturation by this friendly torrent of information, he stopped.

“Well,” he said, “you probably have enough to keep you busy for a while, so I am going to leave you here to fish and I’ll go upstream a way and try my own luck. I’ll stay in sight.” With that, Mr. Parr began to wade out of the stream.

Actually having reached the point where I was relieved to see him go and leave me to the privacy of my seemingly desperate ignorance and lack of experience, but also being then young, fearless, and undaunted, even with the father of my secretly affianced, I ventured to suggest that I should know what to do once the hook was set.

He stopped, turned toward me with a wistful expression, and smiled. “Don’t be disappointed if you don’t catch anything,” he said, “but if you do, just keep the line taut and call me, and I’ll come back down and help you out.”

Alone in the Lists

Thus, early on the road of life I found myself set alone in a strange land trying to issue a challenge to an unfamiliar creature that I could not even see, hear or touch, much less defeat. Like Dante, I had been armed with all the weapons, and given all the knowledge, and had all the faith I needed to meet the challenge and defeat the foe. Nonetheless, I felt impotent and small.

Today, after forty and more years of fishing on the Beaverkill, I know exactly why Van started my fishing career in that particular part of the Club’s three miles of stream. For some reason, he liked me, and thought he would give me a better chance to meet the challenge of catching a trout, however unlikely that prospect was for a neophyte in the low, warm waters of a hot, dry August morning.

He had put me in a spot where, as low as the water level was that summer, there were visible currents in and around exposed boulders and deeper, shaded pockets of water where cooler springs might enter from the steep opposite bank and active, hungrier fish might congregate, even in the heat of the day. These fish might be enticed out from the safety of their cooler pockets by a floating morsel, and the motion and ripples of the current might obscure the unnatural disruption of the surface caused by a less than perfect cast.

To me, however, what seems a beautiful and tranquil place today seemed then a place of confusion and disorder. I had not yet learned how to wade and balance on the unseen and irregular surfaces of the streambed while focusing on a floating fly the size of a fingernail two score feet distant. Every time I tried to cast I would stumble and flail away with the rod. Some unnoticed angle of branch, some newly relevant thicket of grass, some gust of morning breeze, would catch my fly, or snarl and knot my line or leader, and interfere disastrously with the perfect cast I intended to launch.

Still, after a while I began to get the hang of it, and finally managed to make my fly land upstream approximately where intended. I then found that I could not follow Van’s admonition to watch the floating fly carefully, because of the reflection of the sky on the water’s surface.

After some experimentation, however, I discovered how to wade back and forth across the stream so to position myself not to have the sky reflecting off that part of the water receiving the attention of my fly. Then I carefully practiced, watching the floating fly for a strike while stripping in the line to prepare for a strike. Again and again I cast for what seemed a long time, even in my state of concentration, but without any effect whatsoever.

On the brink of boredom and despair, I noticed that my fly had disappeared. What happened to it? My vision of a “strike” was associated with a violent and obvious commotion on the surface of the stream. No one had told me that a wary trout might float up just below the surface and suck in a fly as quietly and smoothly as pickpocket could lift a smooth wallet out of a loose hip pocket.

The gods must have favored me that day because, before the fish could spit out the fly, something told me it was time to hold the stripped line fast in my left hand and firmly but not violently pull back on the rod, just as if I were commencing a cast. I did, I felt resistance, the rod bowed, and the hook set.

At the same time I let out a whoop, and then felt the thrill of the wriggling and jerking of the fish on the line. After a few seconds of this, it jumped clear of the water, landed with a smack, and disappeared.

“Keep the tip of your rod up,” hollered Van as he came striding toward me down the bank of the stream, “and let the line run out if the fish wants to run. Try to guide him away from holes, branches and brush,” he added as he came closer.

A Test Passed

Van Parr coached me, and, so it seemed, the fish, into the net. This fish was a 12-inch Brook trout, not a true “trout” as the ichthyologists say, but a member of the closely related “Char” family.

“This will be good to eat for breakfast,” he said as he killed the fish with a small billy extracted from a vest pocket. “In fact,” he added, handing the club to me, “why don’t you take this in case you catch another you want to keep.”

I was thrilled, not just by the natural miracle I had experienced, but because a challenge had been met, a test passed, and I had been found worthy, just like thousands before me whom I would never know but with whom I felt kinship in that moment.

Now Van Parr was smiling in an exuberant way. “See what else you can do,” he said. He was a good, Christian man, and walked back up the stream.

My Lady’s Favor

Again the gods smiled on me. I caught two more fish, and these struck suddenly and violently, making it easy to set the hook. Somehow, I managing to net them with the techniques Van had imparted. When Van came down to see how I was, I had three trout.

“Well, well,” he said, peering into the creel, “those are nice fish, and that’s quite a performance, especially with the stream this low and the temperature this warm. I only caught 8 fish myself, killed four, and lost half a dozen more. But it was a good morning. Let’s go back and have a drink before dinner.”

We worked our way out of the stream and walked up the road to the Farmhouse. Sally and Helene Parr were sitting on the porch of the Farmhouse in the ancient oak chairs. As we were passing them on the way to the Clubhouse, Helene in a raised voice called out, “How did you do?”

“Oh,” said Van, “I caught a few, but Ed caught a 12-inch Native and two good-sized stream Browns.”

I was not sure exactly what this meant, but clearly it was both proof and praise. I smiled up at Sally, who beamed down at me.

“I knew you would be a good fisherman,” she exclaimed.

I had my lady’s favor and clearly had met one of the unspoken challenges, but noticed that Helene Parr gave her daughter a puzzled sideward glance, which included raised eyebrows.

This prompted me to wonder if perhaps Helene might be another of the unspoken challenges, and this, indeed, turned out to be the case.

Nonetheless, and while Helene Parr’s approbation never was sudden or startling like the sometimes strike of a trout, somehow I met that challenge too. Two years later she became my mother-in-law and remained so, dearly loved by me, until her death on Armistice Day in 1996.

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Forty-two years have passed since that first day at the Beaverkill Trout Club. Except for the following year, when I was at the University of Madrid, I fished at the Club every year.

I became one of those Wall Street lawyers, like Charlie Campbell, Van Parr, Van Parr’s father, and many members of the Club. Just like them, I fished the cool waters for their ever-soothing relief from vexing clients, reluctant witnesses, ingenious opposing counsel, imperious judges, dusty old courtrooms and anguishing trials.

More than the fishing, I walked the banks, meadows, and woods. I studied the enigmatic aquatic and terrestrial insect life in all its phases. I encountered the amazing deer, ospreys, bears, beaver, porcupines, ground hogs, kingfishers, eagles, owls, otters, weasels, butterflies, and turkeys. I beheld the dazzling carpets of wild flowers, as they emerged, species-by-species, week-by-week, from April to November. I felt the awe of thunder and lightning, and afterwards gloried in the rainbows and the rushing river.

All of these wonders I shared at the Beaverkill Trout Club with Sally and our three sons, Eddie, Grant and Ward. They are now men with wives and children of their own, but when they were boys, I had to share teaching them how to fish with their grandfather Van. Only then did I understand why Van had been annoyed at Colonel Sykes’ presuming to teach me to cast. Perhaps my sons will let me help teach their children to fish.

I came to know most of my fellow Club members. Many of them were old men, some into their nineties, when I was in my twenties. They told me stories of fishing, of their own experiences on the river, and how they had bonded with the Club and its members. I laughed at their many amusing stories, some told on themselves and some on their fellow members’ eccentricities, and shook my head at many sad stories. I heard the lore and history of the Club, things that had been related by some of the earliest members, some of them veterans of the Civil War.

That conflict, like the early days of the Club, seems a long time ago, yet today we have members in their twenties, while I am in my sixties, and stories no doubt seem antique to them even though I remember the underlying events like yesterday. At the fireplace, at the dining table, in the drying room, on the porch, at cards and with whiskey, even on the stream, we still tell stories about our river, about our fishing in it, about each other, about what we have done in our lives and about the things that were told to us by others

Thus I have learned many things about the Beaverkill Trout Club. If time is like our beloved river, there are many tales to write down and pass on before they float away and disappear downstream.