My family has been in the Rocky Mountains since 1847, so you could say I have a built-in preference for wide-open spaces, high plains, and plenty of elbow room. That made it all the more surprising when I found out my church was sending me to New York City on a proselytizing mission, just a few weeks after I graduated from high school.
New York was a culture shock, as was the rest of the East Coast, which I experienced on my mission. Once I left, I swore I’d never go back. My soul pined for the Rockies and the familiar surroundings of my youth.
I kept that promise for most of a decade, until I married a wife who loves Broadway. We ended up back in New York City for our first anniversary. Now, I’m aware the East Coast isn’t just New York, and despite friendships with diehard anglers who live from Maine to Georgia, it was hard for me to visualize trout fishing existing in the same universe as some of the country’s oldest, largest cities.
But there’s no denying the enormous cultural impact the East has made on fly fishing. What we’ve lived through in real-time since the West became fly fishing’s holy land is probably similar to what folks experienced when Theodore Gordon started messing around with dry flies on the Neversink River.
I had my first taste of it two years ago when I fished the Niagara River and Lake Ontario for a few days. Sure, it’s a far cry from Appalachian brook trout streams or anything in the Catskills, but I loved the tiny taste I had of East Coast fly fishing. That trip, combined with my East Coast friends talking up their fisheries, has made me seriously plan a trip to explore more of what the area has to offer.
In particular, there are three experiences I’d love to have.
Challenging Hatches
The West has its share of tough hatches, but enough anglers I know and respect have told me that a Rocky Mountain tailwater isn’t the only place I’ll run into fish counting the tail feathers on your blue-winged olive imitation.
I’m not sure if you can quantify how “tough” one region is compared to another, but I’ll say this for the East: they seem to have a greater depth of hatch variance, especially when it comes to mayflies. I don’t get Hendricksons, Sulphurs, or Hexes in my neck of the woods. And I hear my East Coast buddies talk about Hendricksons, in particular, the same way we discuss tricos out West—with a sort of frustrated reverence that only comes from noting minuscule color differences between the males and females.
Having never fished with those flies before, I’m sure it’d be a challenge to learn the nuances of each bug. Shoot, I’m still learning about the early-season blue-winged olives we get here in Wyoming. Fishing these hatches would be a familiar, but new, challenge that I’d love to experience someday.
Shot At Steelhead, Salmon
This isn’t the place to debate Great Lakes steelhead and their Pacific-run cousins. Having caught a 30-inch Great Lakes steelie from the Niagara two years ago, though, I appreciate these fish for what they are—hard-fighting, tough, exhilarating fish, especially on a fly rod. If you can’t appreciate a hefty lake-run fish busting through a river, then fly fishing isn’t for you.
I know a lot of good Great Lakes steelhead fishing happens more in the Midwest, but the few I caught just a couple miles from Lake Ontario have me begging for more.
We have our share of big lakes in the West, and a few of them are known for runs of lake-dwelling fish that go up tributaries looking to spawn. But it’s not common to get into fish as large as the ones living in the Great Lakes, and certainly not on a consistent basis.
Then there’s the salmon. Again, these fish aren’t exactly the same as their Pacific cousins (I’ve had the fortune of spending a lot of time in Alaska chasing these fish), but the sheer number and size of the salmon runs are incredible. We have salmon runs out West, but the fish are a landlocked sockeye called kokanee, and don’t generally eat flies. Plus, in many places, targeting them while they’re spawning is illegal. Atlantic salmon are another unique opportunity in the East, even if some of the best fishing is locked away at exclusive lodges.
Classic Rivers
Finally, the trout rivers themselves are the stuff of fly fishing lore. The Beaverkill, the Neversink, the Delaware, the Letort, Spring Creek—they may not be the best rivers back East, but they’re names most anglers are familiar with. Who wouldn’t love the chance to fish the rivers where American dry fly fishing was born and perfected? These fisheries may not have the mystique or grand backdrops of the Snake, Madison, and Green, but they’ve certainly earned their place in fly fishing’s history.
Even as a born-and-bred Westerner, I can’t ignore what the East has done for fly fishing, and what many of its trout streams still have to offer.