A River Never Sleeps: Conservation, History, and the Fly Fishing River

A River Never Sleeps: Conservation, History, and the Fly Fishing River - A Full-Day Symposium, Held on November 21, 2009 - DVD Available for Pre-order

Bradford illustration

“A river is water in its loveliest form; rivers have life and sound and movement and infinity of variation, rivers are veins of the earth through which the life blood returns to the heart.”

- Roderick L. Haig-Brown, A River Never Sleeps

Image courtesy Charles Bradford, The Angler’s Guide, National Sporting Library.

Download the program in PDF format.

DVD

A DVD of the symposium will be available for sale through the Library in winter 2010 for $20 per copy. Please download the order form or contact Judy Sheehan at 540-687-6542 x 10 for more information.

The Symposium

The National Sporting Library, a research center devoted to horse and field sports in Middleburg, Virginia, presented a full-day program of lectures and discussion on fly fishing rivers and conservation, past and present. The symposium included informative lectures by fly fishing authors and scholars and a moderated panel discussion.

For centuries, rivers and streams have drawn anglers to fish their waters and have inspired poetry and prose, from Izaak Walton to Roderick Haig-Brown. In the 19th century, North American rivers such as the Cascapedia in Quebec and the streams of the Catskills and Adirondacks attracted recreational fly fishers from the wealthy industrialist class, many who established exclusive camps. But pollution from mining, lumbering, and industry and the stocking of streams with non-native species threatened the health of rivers and native fish populations.

In the U.S., anglers were responsible for early conservation efforts, which included privatizing or restricting access to certain streams, legislating shorter fishing seasons, and regulating fishing on some rivers to flies only. Later, a more ecological approach to river conservation emerged, and in 1959, the organization, Trout Unlimited, was founded on the banks of the Au Sable River near Grayling, Mich. Through today’s conservation initiatives, organizations such as TU and the Federation of Fly Fishers have helped to protect watersheds from mining and development, halted harmful hydroelectric dam projects, pioneered catch-and-release practices to preserve native trout populations, and restored many endangered rivers. Today countless local, state, and international water and trout groups are contributing to grassroots conservation initiatives, so much so that the Journal for Conservation Biology recently touted recreational anglers as essential to the future of fisheries conservation/restoration.

The National Sporting Library and Fly Fishing

The National Sporting Library maintains an extensive collection of rare books on fly fishing and angling. Many of these titles are from the John H. Daniels Collection, which includes almost ninety editions of Izaak Walton’s, The Compleat Angler, originally published in 1653. The Library also owns Joseph Seccombe’s Business and Diversion Inoffensive to God (1739) – the first angling text printed in America; Edmund Davis’ Salmon Fishing on the Grand Cascapedia; F.M. Halford’s Dry Fly Entomology; several limited editions art books published by the Lyons Press; historical and current sporting periodicals; and contemporary titles by popular writers. The Library’s collections are open to researchers and the general public.

The National Sporting Library’s annual symposium and Public Lecture Series are made possible by the generosity of an anonymous donor.

Speakers:

James Prosek, fly fishing author and artist, Easton, Conn., “Izaak Walton and Native Trout of the World”
Hoagy B. Carmichael, author, film-maker, & historian, New York, N.Y., “The Grand Cascapedia, a Salmon River of History”
John Ross, conservationist, author, and former chair Virginia Council Trout Unlimited; Upperville, Va.; “Native Trout of Virginia ”
Bryon Borgelt, Ph.D., historian, St. John's Jesuit High School, Maumee, Ohio, “Flies Only: Early Sport Fishing Conservation on Michigan’s Au Sable River”
Samuel Snyder, Ph.D., (Moderator), Anchorage, Alaska., "Wading through History: Understanding Angling's Evolving Ethics."

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John Ross