How’s that for a dramatic name? The beaverkill is the most famous flyfishing river in the United States, located in the Catskills in New York. It is to flyfishing what woodstock is to music festivals (famous and over). I was thinking grim thoughts about its name the other day, searching for the massive slaughter that lead to its appellation. Beaver friend Bob Arnebeck was the one who told me that “kill” is Dutch for “creek”, so beaverkill just means beaver creek.
Which makes sense, because if it was named after a whoppingly successful slaughter every single river in America could have been named “Beaverkill” at one time. The name is still pretty unusual, even though the experience was ubiquitous. This particular river was once full to bursting with trout, which does imply lots of successful breeding pools for juvenile salmonids, thanks to some happy beavers long ago. It is now mostly underground, pent up in concrete like most of our rivers. It was overfished even before the 1900’s, and there are now hatcheries along it to keep the anglers happy.
I was reading about the beaverkill because a reporter that I had recently made contact with let me know that she was going to be the editor of the Watershed Post, which covers New York’s watershed, spanning five counties in the Catskill mountains. I had written this reporter when she initially covered a presentation given by Beaver Solutions to the Massachusetts state house in not very beaver-generous terms. She took a little hunting to find, and in the course of doing so I learned that she was an interesting writer and worth attempting to convert. Turns out she was intrigued by my email, loved the name “worth a dam” and wants to set an interview when she transitions to WP. She thought writing about beavers in Albany watersheds might be a good idea.
Given the hatchet job performed by the NY Times earlier this year, I couldn’t agree more. We’ll see what happens.
