American Museum of Fly Fishing

The American Museum of Fly Fishing is a small gem of a museum on Route 7A in Manchester Village, dedicated to the history, art, and culture of fly fishing in America. The collection includes thousands of rods, reels, flies, and associated tackle spanning three centuries, along with paintings, photographs, and equipment belonging to notable anglers — Hemingway, Eisenhower, Hoover, and many professional fishing writers.

It's the kind of museum that works even if you have no interest in fishing: the objects are beautiful in their own right, the craft of hand-tying flies is extraordinary, and the cultural history it traces — the Battenkill was one of the great trout rivers of the Northeast — is genuinely interesting. The museum is small; an hour is plenty. The Battenkill itself, a short walk away, is still a beautiful river and still holds brown trout.

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The museum's collection includes the fishing tackle of presidents — Herbert Hoover's bamboo rod, Dwight Eisenhower's flies, Jimmy Carter's equipment. Hoover was a serious fly fisherman who fished the Battenkill, the river that runs through Manchester, and wrote extensively about the sport's connection to democracy and freedom. His 1963 book 'Fishing for Fun — And to Wash Your Soul' is in the museum's library.