Many years ago, a time when I was less  aware of clutter, I accumulated things. This isn’t to say that I don’t accumulate things now. I do. Fly rods. Comfortable socks. Tools I kind of need today and might need again sometime before I die. But as a teenager, I kept a lot of garden-variety  oddments. Ticket stubs. Altoid tins. And catalogs.

The catalog: Not as clumsy or random as a website. An elegant medium for a more civilized age.

Some would come seemingly at random. Like mushrooms, you’d automatically receive thick copies of Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s catalogs a few times a year. Inevitably from some survey or purchase, your data would be sold and a bevy of discount outdoor outlets would also enter into the mix.

For the fly fisher, the real gems came from two other sources. Both of which were also print media.

First, there were the local fly shops. Living in Northern Virginia, Murray’s Fly Shop (Edinburg, VA) and Flyfisher’s Paradise (State College, PA) were great gets. The print was lo-fi. Sold color cardstock covers contained pages upon pages of grayscale images and descriptions. Most importantly, there were pages of local. Local flies. Local books. Local information. And how did you end up with one of these catalogs? Stopping by or calling the fly shop in question. You had to work for it a little bit, which made mail day a little sweeter.

The second way to procure catalogs was by purchasing a fly fishing magazine. Inside, there were lots and lots of ads. Ads for rod companies. Ads for tying companies. Ads for destination services. You’d call, speak to a person or an answering machine, leave your address, and wait a few weeks for a big envelope to show up. What was inside? The very same catalog sent to fly shops. Glossy, full page photography. Specs upon specs. Maybe press releases. If you were lucky: stickers.

I’d scan every catalog page from the shops, from Orvis, Sage, Scott, Winston, Thomas & Thomas, Ross, and more. I was planning. I was learning. I loved branding, marketing, and a good sales pitch. Above all, I was having fun. Photos of bonefish flats, giant Patagonian brown trout, and, every once in a while, streams that I actually fished.

Those brands still put out catalogs. But there are QR codes and nudges to visit their website. It makes sense, as the content and the information is dynamic. But it isn’t tangible. To be fair, neither are my old catalogs from the 1990s. Moving out of my mom’s house, and the many moves after that, forced me to declutter. I can’t say that I wish I had boxes of old fly fishing archives in my attic. At the same time, there would be more value in that than some of the other things I’ve accumulated.

Thanks to the internet, a lot of those catalogs still exist. Now and again, I’ll look for an image or a description of a 20 or 30 year-old piece of gear. Sometimes I’ll follow forum rabbit trails and get bits and pieces. What I have discovered is that there are some treasure troves curated by companies. For example, Sage has catalog cover images hosted on their Facebook account and Redington has links on their website. A quick search turns up more on the aforementioned forums and online communities like Reddit.

Why look at 25 year old catalogs? For me, it is a link to me and my start in fly fishing. My first this, that, and the other. Why I wanted the St. Croix rod. Why I pestered the local Orvis manager to give me a job. Why I still love the stories that gear can tell. You might call it consumerism or materialism. But for a lot of fly fishers, the gear wasn’t what we were ever truly pursuing.