Fly Fishing the Beaverkill River. Evan Lavery

      29 . Beaverkill River

       Location: Southeastern New York, about a 2-hour ride from New York City; a 2-hour ride from Newark, New Jersey; a 3-hour ride from Hartford, Connecticut; and a 4-hour ride from Boston, Massachusetts. Full-service airports are available in all four cities.

      The Beaverkill River is located in fabled Roscoe, New York. Roscoe is known as “Trout Town, U.S.A.” or the “Fly-Fishing Capital of the East.” The Beaverkill has been fished, and written about, for as long as fly fishing has been pursued in the United States. It is one of the most famous trout streams in the country, and

      has been since the early 1800s. Because it has been one of the East’s premier trout fisheries for many generations, the Beaverkill’s longtime fame may overshadow the outstanding fly-fishing opportunities it still offers today.

      The Beaverkill River is sometimes referred to as the Beaver Kill. “Kill” means river in Dutch. It is a tributary of the East Branch of the Delaware River. The river is approximately 44 miles long, draining an area of roughly 300 square miles. By the mid-19th century, the native brook trout population had been decimated. This led to the establishment of hatcheries to try to bring back the fishing. Beginning in the 1880s,

      nonnative brown trout replaced the

      brook trout.

      To say that the angling history associated with the Beaverkill is significant would be an understatement. Many fly-fishing innovations that originated in the United States began in the Catskills region of New York, and on the Beaverkill specifically. Given this rich literary history and high profile, you may not always be able to find a secluded pool on the Beaverkill. But you can still walk the same banks, and stalk the same pools and riffles, that some of the most celebrated anglers in the history of the sport have fished.