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By Walt Young
sports@altoonamirror.com
Last month during a wrestling tournament between Penn State and Rutgers, Penn State used the event to announce a $250,000 endowment to fund the university's historic fly-fishing program. At the request of the anonymous donor, the program will be renamed the Joe Humphreys Fly Fishing Program to recognize the renowned angler who taught the fly-fishing courses at Penn State for 19 years. Humphreys, 93, wrestled for Penn State while a student there.
After graduating from Penn State in 1957, Humphreys was a successful wrestling coach at several high schools for 13 years, which led to his return to Penn State as an assistant wrestling coach in 1970. In addition to coaching, he also taught several phys-ed courses such as bowling, personal defense and ice skating before taking the lead role in the fly-fishing program.
Humphreys' career as a fly-fishing instructor is certainly noteworthy, but his accomplishments as a fly-fisherman are nothing short of legendary. In 1977, he caught the Pennsylvania state record brown trout -- a 34-inch monster weighing almost 16 pounds -- on fly tackle.
He competed in five World Fly Fishing Championships that took him to Finland, Ireland, Wales, Italy and Portugal. He authored several books, "Joe Humphreys Trout Tactics" and a revised and updated version of that work and "On the Trout Stream with Joe Humphreys." He was recently the subject of an award-winning documentary "Live the Stream: The Story of Joe Humphreys." Fittingly, he was inducted into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2012 and the Fly Fishing Hall of Fame in 2013.
Long after his retirement, Humphreys continues to give back to the sport that has meant so much to him by mentoring the U.S. Youth Flying Fishing Team, serving as honorary chair for the On the Fly charity fishing tournament that benefits the Centre County Youth Service Bureau, and supporting Project Healing Waters, which helps wounded veterans learn fly-fishing and fly tying.
The fly-fishing courses at Penn State began in the 1930s by another fly-fishing legend, George Harvey. During the fall of his freshman year at Penn State in 1931, Harvey attended an orientation speech given by the Dean of the College of Agriculture, Ralph Watts. During his presentation, Watts counseled the students that in addition to their formal education it was equally important to find hobbies and other activities they could participate in throughout their lives. Watts happened to be a fisherman and offered to teach fishing to any of the young men there who were interested.
On the day before the opening of trout season the following spring, Harvey went to see the dean and asked to go fishing with him the next day. Watts told young Harvey he would be glad to teach him to fish, just not on the opening day of the season, which he liked to have to himself.
Harvey brashly advised Watts that he already knew how to fish and that he just wanted a ride to the stream the next morning. The freshman's boldness must have touched Watts somehow, because Harvey indeed secured a ride with the dean.
On the stream, the two men went their separate ways as Harvey had promised. When they rendezvoused a few hours later, Watts acknowledged he had caught a couple of small trout. The dean was flabbergasted when Harvey announced he had caught his limit, which back then was 25 trout, and proceeded to dump the dozens of fish onto the grass beside him. Harvey then explained to his elder fishing partner that he had caught all those trout on flies.
Watts was so impressed with the young man's fishing prowess that he asked Harvey to teach him and other faculty members to tie flies, which led to Harvey's conducting the first college-level angling and fly-tying class in the United States in 1934 while he was still an undergraduate.
After graduating in 1935, Harvey took a teaching position at Penn State Mont Alto before returning to the University Park campus as an instructor in 1942. In 1947, history was made again when the angling and fly-tying classes became the first such accredited course at a university in the United States.
By the time Harvey retired from Penn State in 1972, he had also taught 72 fishing and fly-tying extension classes in 68 Pennsylvania cities, and throughout his teaching career is considered to have instructed 36,000 young and adult students in fishing, fly tying and fly casting. But his true impact on the sport probably transcends that number by tenfold, if not more.
Harvey first met Humphreys when he was very young and soon became a mentor, friend and fishing companion to the young man. When Harvey retired shortly after Humphreys began his teaching career at Penn State, turning the angling classes over to his protege was a natural transition. Humphreys long tenure with the program was succeeded by Vance McCullough, Mark Belden, Greg Hoover and currently by George Daniel.
With such an amazing legacy, the future of the Joe Humphreys Fly Fishing Program at Penn State now is brighter than ever.
"I'm a trout-bitten kid who went on to fish in countries around the world. I am proud to see the program flourishing," Humphrey said. "This is what I've dreamed about. It's the dream coming true, that this course will be forever. I can go to my grave and rest easy, knowing it's taken care of."