A lifetime on the line: Author Nick Lyons talks fly fishing in Montana State lecture series

By the age of 7, Nick Lyons was an adept fisher.

He spent his childhood fishing at his grandfather’s hotel up in the Catskill Mountains of New York. In his early days, he would catch frogs and sell them for 5 cents to a comedian at the hotel, who would place them under cups to scare guests in the dining room.

Now, at 93, Lyons isn’t the fisher he once was. He’s in a wheelchair and hasn’t touched a rod in years. But his treasured memories and vast catalogue of books will forever keep him connected to the world of fly fishing.

Lyons regaled the culmination of his lifetime passion Tuesday during Montana State University’s Trout and Salmonid Lecture Series, where he was this year’s featured speaker.

The event, called “Evolution of a Fly Fisherman”, allowed Lyons to share some of his best fishing memories from more than 80 years of angling.

Fly fishing author and conservationist Craig Mathews introduced Lyons and his work. He met Lyons in the 1970s in West Yellowstone shortly after he became a fishing guide.

“I was just stunned. Nick had been one of my idols,” Mathews said.

Mathews spoke kindly about Lyons and their lifelong friendship. He told the audience that Lyons had encouraged him to start writing and helped give him and other authors a voice.

Lyons traced his lifelong obsession to his childhood in New York and recalled the decades following, where he dreamed of fishing constantly and longed to be on the water.

As a teenager in New York City, he took the subway and then the train to upstate New York to fish, a six-hour round-trip.

Later, while living in Brooklyn with his wife and four kids, he worked as a professor at Hunter College and an apprentice editor but dreamed of bright rivers during dull meetings. He was reminded of fishing everywhere he went, even in puddles on the city’s pavement.

In June, when he was done teaching for the semester, he would travel to Berkshire, a county in England, and fish the Kennet River.

Fishing with rising fish, dry fly, on upstream only, were restrictions that “dramatically changed much of how (he) fished for years after,” he said.

Lyons sprinkled in anecdotes of how his clumsiness has gotten in the way throughout the years. He told a story about slipping into the mud of the Kennet River, “almost drowning”, to hysterical laughter. Later, at author Neil Patterson’s house, he left a mud print of his rear end on the bathroom wall.

“It became the most minor of fly fishing artifacts,” he said to the laughing crowd.

Lyons’ love for fly fishing is integral to who he is as a writer. He worked at Crown Publishers and created the Sportsmen’s Classics series, wrote his “Seasonable Angler” column in Fly Fisherman magazine, and published “Spring Creek” about catching trout in Montana.

When he left Crown Publishers to start Lyons Press in 1984, he bought many of his own books.

“I never wanted to publish more fly fishing books just to have more on the list,” he said. “I wanted the best, the few best, and they were hard to come by.”

The books he chose were carefully decided upon — and he read every one that hit his desk.

His business “grew and flourished” over the next 20 years before Lyons sold it.

Lyons ended his talk by reminiscing on his time fishing in O’Dell Creek in the Madison Valley after having free time for the first time in decades — an experience he called “the most exhilarating of my fly fishing life.”