Fountains of Youth – Classic trout flies that have withstood the test of time … flies that remain “forever young”

by Rusty Dunn

Ask historically minded fly anglers where the meth­ods and traditions of fly fishing in America originated, and most will probably reply the Catskill Mountains of New York state.  The Catskills were the cradle of Ameri­can fly angling, but an often overlooked area of east­ern Penn­sylvania would rightfully be called the birth­place.  Before the Catskills were famous for trout, leading American fly anglers fished the streams of eastern Penn­syl­va­nia’s Pocono Mountains near the village of Henryville.  Theodore Gordon, the Catskill angling leg­end, was but a babe-in-arms when Henryville’s Brod­head Creek and its tributaries were the place to be for American trout fishing.  Limestone spring creeks of “The Brodheads” held abundant native brook trout and attracted large numbers of eastern fly anglers in the mid-19^th century.  Henryville was then the center of high profile fly fishing in America.

Merchant Arthur Henry, after whose family the town of Henryville is named, established in 1836 a hotel and trading center on Paradise Creek, a tributary of Brod­head Creek.  Word of the area’s great angling spread and, in 1848, the hotel was expanded and renamed ‘Henryville House’.  An expanding rail system gave ready access to The Brodheads from the east, and noted jour­nal­ists of New York City and Phila­del­phia wrote of the area’s abundance. Thaddeus Nor­ris, argu­ably the earliest of America’s great angling authors, wrote glowingly about the area’s trout fishing in his 1864 book The American Angler’s Book.  Future, cur­rent, and former American Presi­dents stayed at Hen­ryville House and sampled its fine angling.  ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, Annie Oakley, and a long list of visiting luminar­ies added to the buzz.  Meanwhile, Samuel Phillippe of nearby Easton, PA per­fected in the 1870s the first six-sided split bamboo fly rods on the Brodheads.  Hen­ryville House and its surround­ing creeks were Amer­i­ca’s best known fly fishing des­tina­tion, earn­ing the endearing name of ‘Paradise Val­ley’.  Henryville House survived for well over a century and was the oldest trout fishing hotel in America when it closed in 1984.

Sadly, paradise was short-lived.  Years of abuse by farming and logging left a late-1800s trout fishery in serious decline.  Water temperatures in­creased, and brook trout decreased to near zero, being replaced by hatchery-bred browns.  Many formerly public waters were turned into pri­vate clubs.  The great trout fishing of the area had be­come ordinary, and fly anglers abandoned Henryville for better rivers to the north, in partic­ular the Catskills.  The exodus of fly anglers from the Po­conos fueled ascension of the Cats­kills as America’s major center of fly angling devel­op­ment.

The glory of Henryville’s trout fishing may have faded, but one of its truly fine caddisfly imitations continues today.  The ‘Henryville Special’ was designed around 1920 by Hiram Brobst, a lifelong an­gler from nearby Palmerton, PA.  He designed the fly to imitate cad­disflies in swift water, but inspiration came from an unidentified old English English fly tying book.  The fly was nameless in the book, and Brobst simply called his fly the “No Name”, but several years later it became known as the “Hen­ry­ville Special”.  Brobst first tied the fly with a body of red silk floss, but olive-green floss or dubbing eventually became the most popular version.

The Henryville Special is an excellent general attractor dry fly, and it is especially effective when caddisflies are on the wing.  It is an impressionistic pat­tern, one whose palmered body hackle suggests mo­tion even when the fly is dead drifted.  The fly rides high, with both body and wings well above the surface.  It is an excellent fly for twitching or skit­tering to imitate egg-laying caddis.  Show a Hen­ryville Special to a trout near you dur­ing caddis sea­son, and you might just rekindle some of Henry­ville’s former glory.

Copyright 2021, Rusty Dunn

Henryville Special  

Hiram Brobst tied the Henryville Special to imitate caddis on turbulent waters, hence his use of a pal­mered body hackle for good floatation.  The Hen­ryville Special is an excellent imitation of egg-laying caddisflies.