Saturday, July 23, 2022
THE BEST FLY FISHER THE "INDUSTRY" NEVER KNEW… BUT YOU DID
In the 1980's, at the SAAB Aircraft factory in Sweden, there was a large banner hung strategically between the engineering and sales departments. It said (in English), "NOTHING HAPPENS UNTIL SOMEBODY SELLS SOMETHING." The banner had almost certainly been pilfered, but the lesson was not merely a good taunt - it was dead serious.
James Whitermore lived the lesson. He did not sell aircraft, of course, but he could have. He sold mostly branch-bank fixtures and furnishings… to customers across the Southern Tier of New York and along its New England and Pennsylvania borders. Few fly fishers on the storied rivers will have known Jim, but the Darbys did and the Dettes did and Francis Betters did and Jim Deren did and the now-gone craftsmen at Orvis did. He did not sell anything to them; he bought, but only supplies and samples to aid his own excellent craft.
Robert Mondavi is perhaps the most famous sales legend to have said, "If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life." Jim Whitermore would have added, "Especially if every work day ends on a trout stream." Most of Jim's days did… often in the Catskills, but also the Adirondacks, Berkshires, the Batten Kill drainage, and Pennsylvania freestones from Spring Creek to the Delaware. When the seasons turned cold, Jim sold north. He pursued the steelhead opportunities coming from Lakes Erie and Ontario with a joy appropriate to being gifted a second season.
To say that most anglers did not know Jim confuses the fact that many a fly fisher met him. He was the walking, wading, definition of gregarious. Jim believed the trout stream to be a byway of brotherhood and an old-fashioned party line of information. He shared stream knowledge generously and absorbed everything shared by others. If he gave you one of his flies, which happened often, first glance suggested that it was too perfect to be fished. It would take more than a glance to realize that the rod tucked in his armpit was a Payne or Gilliam or Wes Jordan original. (You certainly would not learn it from anything said by Jim.) As you well know, James Whitermore was also an artist - yep, the painting variety - and his love of fly fishing extended from the artist's rod in his hand to the artist's imitation on the bright water. Jim did not own art to collect it. He enjoyed creating art and he used art in the way he understood other artists intended their creations to be lovingly employed.
I was privileged to fish with Jim over much of the last fifty years. I caught my first trout, on a self-tied fly, fishing with him on the Caldwell. We explored Steelhead holding lies from Twenty Mile Creek on the west to the Salmon River, much farther east. Because my professional leash was much shorter than his, my excursions into Catskill waters and the Adirondacks were mostly annual. Jim's were more like weekly. Retirement multiplied my fly fishing days but age reduced long trips and big-water wading for both of us. "We don’t fish farther than two beers away from home," changed from a good joke to a bit of braggadocio. But, because boots in the water in either Oil Creek or the Kinzua tail waters could be done in about an hour from home, 20” trout were always possible and an occasional reality.
Others should also know what you already know, all trout were always returned to the water. Jim, well, I suggest that he was also returned to the many waters, now fishing with the legends of the art, and he is still sharing lessons one learns by age 90.
Mark I Hampton
Lakewood, NY
