Theodore Gordon

Infobox Person
name = Theodore Gordon


image_size = 180px
caption = Theodore Gordon: The father of American dry-fly fishing
birth_date = 1854
death_date = 1915
occupation = fisherman, writer

Theodore Gordon, a consumptive hermit with a cosmopolitan personality, was a writer who fished the Catskill region of New York State in the late 1800s through the early 1900s. He wrote articles for the Fishing Gazette from 1890 on and published works in Forest and Stream from 1903. Though he never published a book he is often called the father of the American School of dry-fly fishing after he imported English fly-fishing tackle and flies and began to alter the English flies to precisely match the insects hatching in the Neversink, Beaverkill, and Willowemoc rivers. [Forest and Stream, April 3, 1909] Gordon lived his final years and died in 1915 in the Anson Knight house, now deep below the surface of the Neversink reservoir. [The Quest for Theodore Gordon. "Fishless Days, Angling Nights" published by The Globe Peqot Press] In 1949 the author, Sparse Grey Hackle (alias for Alfred W. Miller), wrote in, "The Quest for Theodore Gordon," [The Quest for Theodore Gordon. "Fishless Days, Angling Nights" published by The Globe Peqot Press] that Gordon, "was in fact, the father of dry-fly angling in America."

In the late 1800s Theodore Gordon began fishing the Neversink River in New York State. He represents the major figure in the transition from wet to dry-fly fishing in the United States. Although fishing with the dry fly had been mentioned by Thaddeus Norris in his "The American Angler's Book" (1865) and in several articles by other authors, Gordon became the great practitioner of the technique after he had received a number of dry flies from the Englishman Frederic Halford in 1890. Based on British insects, Halford's flies poorly imitated American hatches, but Gordon embraced the innovative technique and began the arduous study of native entomology that resulted in many indigenous patterns, including his most famous, the Quill Gordon. [page xv, The Legendary Neversink by Justin Askins]

References

John McDonald is responsible for compiling Gordon's writing into a book "The Complete Fly Fisherman: The Notes and Letters of Theodore Gordon." [The Complete Flyfisherman. Edited by John McDonald. New York: Scribners, 1947]