As we approach the end of 2026, thank you for being part of the American Museum of Fly Fishing community. Your generosity helps us preserve the history, traditions, and practices of our sport and promote the conservation of its waters.
This year, we continued this work through new acquisitions, public programming, and the opening of Foundations in Flow. This new major exhibition explores the history of fly fishing through four defining pillars (flies, reels, rods, and the arts), revealing how generations of anglers have shaped a living tradition through craftsmanship, innovation, and a deep connection to the natural world. We will be rotating items from our collection throughout the exhibition, so it is also a wonderful way to bring more of our collection out of storage and into public view. There will always be something new to see.
One of those items, and one of Curator Jim Schottenham’s favorite recent acquisitions, is an early tintype photograph of an angler dating to the 1890s. The image clearly depicts a woman with her creel, a wooden rod form, and an attached reel. Photographs like this are exceptionally rare, making it a particularly exciting addition to the collection. The tintype came to us from a Vermont family, was featured in Arlan Carter’s book 19th Century Fishing Lures, and is now part of the AMFF collection thanks to the generosity of our donor and Trustee Emeritus, Jim Heckman.
For 58 years, the Museum has used the artifacts, art, and literature in our care to tell the stories of the people, places, and things that matter most to this sport we love. Your Annual Appeal gift makes this work possible.
Other Highlights from 2026:
- We published the 52nd volume of our quarterly journal The American Fly Fisher, which included “The Angling Art of Georgia O’Keeffe” by G. William Fowler in the winter edition. This brought a groundbreaking perspective to O’Keeffe’s relationship with the sport.
- We published Trout Do Not Lie, an anthology of twenty award-winning stories from the Robert Traver Fly-Fishing Writing Award, in partnership with the John D. Voelker Foundation. The award is the most widely recognized international prize for fly-fishing stories in English, and the book gathers some of the best voices in the sport from the past twenty years.
- We shared Fishing the Collection season 5, which became our most-viewed social media content this year with Eeland Stribling fishing Orvis Battenkill Model 7/4 7′ 4 wt // circa 1988s in the Catskills.
We look forward to building on this momentum next year with a focus on opening a preview of our Yellowstone exhibition in Vermont in late 2027, before it hits the road as our next traveling exhibit.
Thank you for your continued support which allows us to preserve and share the history of fly fishing for generations to come!
With gratitude,
Sarah Foster, Executive Director
