Up in the Catskills, just a hundred miles from the horrors of New York City is this pristine domain where the fishing is good and so is the hunting. It was also the domain of some of the funniest, most entertaining individuals the world has ever seen, in what was known as the “Borsht Belt,” now just a memory. It was here where Lee Wulff and his wife Joan, America’s best known fly-fishing folk, lived their rich and productive lives. Lee died the following year, age 87, flying his own plane.

The place was replete with vitality, fishing vitality – doing it, learning to do it. There was even a fly fishing conference, which I attended. The conferees spoke nostalgically about the time when they used to eat the fish they caught, instead of the tinned fish they were eating currently. Now they threw back the fish they caught, back in to die, in order to make their capture feel righteous. I kept quiet, until I could keep quiet no longer, and suggested they put up a sign in the water for the fish to read, which said, “We’re only joking. We’re going to throw you back in.” Nobody laughed. Nobody smiled. They had the look on their faces that said, How did we ever let this creep in?

Many of the waters are “No Kill.” But if you insist upon being a primitive, some waters permit the taking of a few fish. My own fishing was not a big success. In fact, I didn’t catch anything.