The Golden Age of Fly-fishing

A collection of 26 articles and dozens of illustrations from the pages of The Sportsman, America's premier sporting magazine in its time: 1927-37. Authors include Eugene Connett, Frederick White, John Alden Knight, Edward R. Hewitt, Robert Page Lincoln, George D.B. Bonbright, and Jack Russell; illustrations are by A.L. Ripley and Ralph Boyer.

When Ralf Coykendall Jr. was but a gleam in his father's eye, Ralf Sr. was working as the advertising director of The Sportsman. Some 60 years later, the younger Coykendall--by now a noted sporting collectibles dealer and author in his own right--came across a stash of the long-defunct magazine in an attic. He recognized immediately what a treasure he'd found. From those yellowed pages he has selected this anthology of writings and drawings on fly-fishing--one of the fastest-growing sports in America today. All of them have aged well: There are a (surprisingly) few quaint references to long-ago equipment (the care and feeding of silk fly lines, for instance), but the strategies, flies, and fish-catching wisdom found here are as timely and illuminating as the day they were written. What has changed is tone: Each article is gracious, unhurried, and optimistic. Fly-fishing has changed little, it seems, but fly-fishers have changed much.

Ralf Coykendall's books include You and Your Retriever, Wildfowling at a Glance, and several editions of Coykendall's Sporting Collectibles Price Guide. His articles have appeared in Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, Antique Week, and many others. He has five children. He and his dog, Abigail, share a home in Manchester, Vermont.