Art Lee, a writer and guide who described the sylvan joys — and the slyest tricks — of fly-fishing to generations of trout and salmon anglers, died on July 25 at a hospital in Middletown, N.Y. He was 76.
Mr. Lee suffered a heart attack in his home in Roscoe, N.Y., in Sullivan County, on July 22 and was taken off life support three days later, said Galen Mercer, an illustrator of Mr. Lee’s books.
Mr. Lee, in his pursuit of fish, championed streamside tactics over entomological science.
In an age when the sport was growing more technical, he argued that knowing where fish hide, stalking them without spooking them and casting to them perfectly were more important than carrying hundreds of flies to “match the hatch” — or imitate the exact insects on the water.
LINK (via: The New York Times)
Wow. His articles in Fly Fisherman magazine in the John Randolph era were an inspiration to me, a young Brit who, minutes after reading each them in magazine that at the time was not on sale and very hard to get in my country, found himself realising that there was a whole load more to fly fishing than mere codified in ancient time Upstream Dry Fly Fishing for equally set in late-19th Century Victorian stone but now mass-stocked Southern English Chalkstream trout.
I watched Art Lee fishing the big Laxa in northern Iceland once, skating flies for Atlantic salmon off a floating line, by means of a pair of little Nikon fieldglasses as I stood beside a car parked up on an adjacent river-valley track. I didn’t realise who the very fine fisherman I was watching was until he turned to speak with his companion and I saw his signature moustache. ….. “Hey, that’s Art Lee!”
Great Angler.