The Beaverkill is the river where American fly fishing keeps its heart. It runs through the Catskills past Roscoe — 'Trout Town USA' — and the storied pools below Junction Pool carry names that read like a liturgy to anyone who's read the old books: Barnhart's, Hendrickson's, Cairns'. It's a classic eastern freestone, tumbling over rounded sandstone and bluestone cobble through a wooded valley of hemlock and rhododendron, clear and cold in spring and thin and warm by August. This is the water that gave us the Hendrickson and the dry-fly tradition that grew up around the Catskill fly. The bed is freestone cobble, the lies in the riffle corners and the long flat pools. Wading is straightforward on cobble, slick in the famous pools where a century of anglers have stood before you, mostly catching no more than you will.

Wading: Warm thin water in late summer