American Museum of Fly Fishing’s Top 50 Objects #3: Theodore Gordon Dry Flies

November 7, 2025 By: American Museum of Fly Fishing Staff

For more than 50 years, the American Museum of Fly Fishing has been preserving the history of fly fishing across two physical locations—in Manchester, Vermont, and Springfield, Missouri—and through their award-winning quarterly journal, The American Fly Fisher. This year, AMFF and MidCurrent have teamed up to count down the 50 most interesting objects in the museum’s permanent collection, which currently includes more than 25,000 objects in total. Each month features historically significant items, with brief descriptions from AMFF curator Jim Schottenham.

We’re down to the final three objects and we’ll be revealing the top object in December. If you missed the first seven installments, be sure to check them out (Part 1: #50—#36, Part 2: #35—#26, Part 3: #25-#16, Part 4: #15-#11, Part 5: #10-#6, Part 6: #5, and Part 7: #4).

That’s Jim in the video above, giving even more in-depth info on this month’s object. Start the video, and then scroll through the images below, allowing Jim to serve as your guide.

Trout flies tied by Theodore Gordon, 1890s
AMFF permanent collection (2007.016.004)

In 1890, Frederick M. Halford sent Theodore Gordon a set of his dry flies, beginning a relationship that helped Gordon redefine attitudes toward fly fishing in America. Gordon promoted an angling attitude that continues today, noting that “in all fly-fishing . . . we are constantly learning something, and this we fancy is the secret of the infinite charm which the sport possesses.” Gordon not only helped establish the Catskill Mountains region as the home of American fly fishing, but his Quill Gordon fly pattern inspired one of the first American fly tying styles: the Catskill school of dry flies.