The Last Original Catskill Fly-Tier

By Jacob S. Kinne

The last of the original Catskill-School style fly tiers lives in Roscoe, NY, a quaint fishing town on the southwestern fringe of the Catskill Mountains. Together, gas stations and grocery stores are out-numbered by fly shops in Roscoe, which should be expected from a town dubbed “Trout Town U.S.A,” and Mary Dette’s family was one of the first to open such a business.



Mary Dette Clark carries out the legacy left behind by her parents, Walt and Winnie Dette, not in an elaborate, well-noticed store on Stewart Avenue (Roscoe’s Main Street), but at the same place her parents ran the business—their home. There’s no advertisement, nothing that indicates the business or the quality of the product, except for the small plywood sign outside of the house that is painted with the phrase, “Dette Trout Flies—Walt, Winnie, Mary.” “Ring bell and walk in,” reads a note taped to the door of the house on Cottage Street. While a first-time customer may feel hesitant about freely opening the door and walking into someone’s house, Mary quickly relaxes the situation by greeting visitors with an enormous welcoming smile that would draw any customer back for business or just simply to visit.



The fly shop is in a tiny side-room in the house that would make a submariner claustrophobic. In the front of the room are cases of thousands of dry and wet flies, nymphs and streamers hand tied by Mary and her hired helpers. Toward the back of the room, burdened by walls of books, filing cabinets full of fly recipes and fly-tying materials, are two desks, both of which are well suited for the petite, gray-haired, 72-year-old woman.



As elegant as the classical music being played from an old radio in the background, Mary, with her gentle fingers, gracefully ties a Red Quill dry fly for a devoted customer. “My customers either call or mail their orders,” Mary says. “Some have read about me in articles, but a lot of them are old-time, loyal customers.” Although she claims not to be a very quick tier, within minutes she adds the final “whip finish” knot that holds her masterpiece together. “I can’t sit for that long anymore, so at the most I tie a couple of dozen a day,” she says as she peeks up from behind the vise.



With orders thumb-tacked all over a board hanging near her desk, Mary stays quite busy tying Catskill-style flies on demand. While other fly-tiers still tie Catskill-style flies, none of them has been born into the tradition or been taught by such legends as has Mary. According to Eric Leiser’s The Dettes—A Catskill Legend, it all began in 1919 when Walt, Mary’s father, moved to Roscoe as his father took on a new job. Things were starting to fall in place for Walt: at home he found a broken fishing pole, in school he met his soon-to-be long-time friend, Harry Darbee, who already had his own book of wet flies; and later he met Winnie Ferdon, whom he eventually married.



In 1927, Walt decided to ask Rube Cross, the legendary fly-tier of the time, if he would teach him how to tie. “Dad offered him $50, and Rube told him to go to hell more or less,” says Mary. “That’s probably why Dad started to tie for money.”



Walt purchased six dozen dry flies from Rube and began to teach himself how to tie by carefully untying them, while Harry and Winnie took strict notes.



The concept of the Catskill-style fly that Walt learned to tie, and which Mary still ties today, was first introduced by Theodore Gordon in the late 1890s. Wet flies were the norm of the period. Dry flies were thought to be beneficial only in the calm-flowing English rivers; though through much research Gordon was able to create flies that better imitated the native hatches of the Catskill waters. Gordon’s signature fly, which not only imitated a single insect, but could be compared to a number of different insects, was called the Quill Gordon. It is still heavily fished today. “The wings are above the hackle, and the hackle is stiff, with a nice stiff tail,” Mary says of the Catskill-style fly. “They are also much more sparse.”



While Gordon established the Catskill style of fly-tying, Rube Cross’s obsession with detail drastically improved the dry fly. “Gordon understood the concept of a stiff hackle, but Rube Cross is more what we tie today,” says Dennis Skarka, owner of the Catskill Flies fly shop on Stewart Avenue in Roscoe. “Some say it’s a more eloquent fly.”



Being the perfectionist that he was, Walt too improved on the dry flies; and for years he and Winnie were in the fly-tying business with Harry. After their wedding in 1928, Walt and Winnie moved the business from a room over the local movie theater into the River View Inn, which was owned by Winnie’s parents, Edwin and Mary Ferdon. “They had fishermen stay there from the middle of April when the season would open until the end of June,” Mary says of the hotel, which is still there, but doesn’t quite look like it used to. “They would be filled with fishermen; this was even a mecca for them back then.” The Dettes eventually took over ownership of the hotel, but had to close it down because of the Great Depression. In the early 1930’s Harry rejoined the business. “They needed his help because my father went down to New York City and was able to get some huge orders for flies, but of course they didn’t make much,” says Mary. “They tied their hearts out and got little; it was terrible.” It got so busy they didn’t even think they would be able to finish the orders. So they hired Elsie Bivins to help sort out the materials. “Shortly after Harry and Elsie got married, and they went off to start their own business,” Mary says.

Meanwhile, the Dettes continued to tie flies for their mail order customers, and after some time moved the shop across the railroad tracks (which is now Route 17) to a room within the local gas station. Even though Walt tended to shy away from the spotlight, he began to attend the annual National Sportsman’s Shows in New York City with Winnie, and tie in front of large crowds, which, according to Ed Van Put’s The Beaverkill—The History of a River and Its People, improved their reputation. In the 1950’s the Dettes moved once again, this time to their first house on Cottage Street when Mary was only 5 years old. Then, some years later, they moved two houses down to the house where Mary continues to reside today during trout season with her husband, Gene. “It was a nice life, but neither my brother nor I were really interested in fly tying,” says Mary. “I tried tying flies when I was younger and tried to fish a little bit with the flies I tied, but every youngster did.”



Mary didn’t actually begin tying flies until after her first son was born in 1955. She asked her father to teach her, and he did. She started tying for money as an addition to the family business. “I just enjoy it,” she says. “I have so many wonderful people who come into the store, and in the winter I get a lot of people who call and just check to see how I am doing.”



Even though she has been featured in renowned fishing magazines, Mary said she’s like her father in that she is not caught up in the glamour. “I tie very good flies, but a lot of the publicity is because of my parents,” she says humbly. “They’ve made such a great name for themselves and they were so well know that I just fell into it.”



An original Catskill fly-tier is someone who is born and taught in the Catskill Region, says Poul Jorgenson, a native of Odense, Denmark, who now lives down the street from Mary, along the Willowemoc Creek just up from Junction Pool where the opening day of trout season is celebrated each year. Poul is a member of the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame and is best known for his realistic style of salmon fly tying. He has written and photographed for a handful of books on the subject and is an avid fly fisherman himself. “Mary is the last of the originals, and her flies are superb,” he says as he sips on his third straight cup of coffee at the famous Roscoe Diner.



Through her father and his propositions with Rube Cross, Mary is the last direct descendant of the “Father of American Fly Fishing“—Theodore Gordon. Mary continues to give back to the sport she has grown to love. She regularly donates her time and her flies to the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum in Livingston Manor, N.Y., where both of her parents have been inducted into the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame, and to other fishing organizations.



Mary plans to continue tying for as long as she feels capable, and right now she feels like she can go on for a long time. She also provides the local fishing report daily during trout season, which she sees as one of her best advertising tools. “It’s something my father started, and he always said to be honest, so I have continued with it.” She personally checks the temperatures of the Willowemoc Creek and the Beaverkill River, and obtains other river conditions, which she makes available to the fishermen by an answering machine over the phone. “I have people call up from as far as Texas to get the fishing report,” Mary says.