Casting Stories: Nick Lyons on Fishing and Writing

In this special long‑form conversation, Brett Barry sits down with legendary angler‑writer and publisher Nick Lyons, now 93, whose life has been shaped by water, words, and the Catskills. From a childhood spent catching frogs for pocket money to founding one of the most influential fishing imprints in America, Nick’s story is a rare blend of grit, curiosity, and literary devotion.

Recorded in Nick’s home in Woodstock, this episode traces his journey from the Bronx to the Beaverkill, from boarding school loneliness to the rhythms of trout streams, from early rejections to a flourishing writing and publishing career. Along the way, Nick reflects on family, loss, love, teaching, and the deep satisfactions of a life lived close to rivers.

In This Episode

• Growing up in the Bronx with Yiddish‑speaking grandparents and bachelor uncles

• Boarding school memories and discovering fishing at Ice Pond

• Summers at the Laurel House in Haines Falls — frogs, creeks, and Catskills lore

• Seeing the Hindenburg fly overhead as a child

• A difficult stepfather and moves from Mount Vernon to Brooklyn

• The Army years and the beginnings of serious reading

• Falling in love with literature at the New School, Bard, and the University of Michigan

• Meeting Mari — art, shyness, and a life partnership

• Early writing struggles and a breakthrough with Field & Stream

• Finding his voice: earthy, nimble, wry, and rooted in lived experience

• Fishing the Catskills — rhythms, hatches, freestone rivers, and memory

• Why salmon fishing never clicked

• Teaching for decades while building a parallel career in publishing

• Reviving classic fishing literature and launching The Lyons Press

• The rise of Sportsman’s Classics and the explosion of modern fly‑fishing writing

• Why he eventually stopped fishing and what he misses most

Nick Lyons is one of the most influential figures in American angling literature — but his story is far larger than fishing. It’s about reinvention, persistence, and the way a life can be shaped by curiosity and attention. This episode captures a voice that is warm, reflective, and still sharp with humor and insight.

Links & References

• Nick Lyons’s memoir Fire in the Straw

• The Seasonable Angler

• Nick's presentation at the Jerry Bartlett Angling Collection

• Mari Lyons Studio