Best Fly Shops in the Catskills

## What a Fly Shop Is For Walking into a Catskills fly shop is a different experience than ordering tackle online. The shops exist partly to sell you leader and tippet and partly to tell you what the water is doing today. A 10-minute conversation with someone who has guided the Willowemoc for 20 years is the single most useful piece of fishing intelligence you can get, and it comes with the shop visit. This is a service guide to the shops that matter in the Catskills. Hours vary seasonally; call ahead, especially in winter. ## Baxter House Inn Fly Shop (Roscoe) The fly shop attached to the Baxter House Inn on Main Street in Roscoe. Tackle selection, flies tied by local tiers, and the kind of morning-coffee-stop-on-the-way-to-the-river atmosphere that has been the Roscoe template for half a century. The Inn itself has been fishing-destination lodging for long enough that the shop underneath functions as the town's informal guide-booking hub. See the [Roscoe, Trout Town guide](/blog/roscoe-trout-town-cannabis-fly-fishing). ## Catskill Fly Fishing Center & Museum (Livingston Manor) Not a retail fly shop exactly, but worth mentioning here because the Center's pro shop stocks tackle and serves as an informal intel source. The main draw is the museum: rotating exhibitions, a Hall of Fame room, and a research library on the history of the sport. Fly-tying demonstrations run on weekends in season. Every Catskills fishing weekend should include a visit. See the [Livingston Manor anchor guide](/blog/livingston-manor-cannabis-willowemoc-creative-weekend). ## Beaverkill Angler (Roscoe) A small fly shop on Stewart Avenue in Roscoe. Tackle, flies, and the local intel you would expect. Hours vary seasonally; worth calling ahead outside prime opening-day and hatch windows. ## Fur, Fin & Feather (Downsville) Further west, on Rt 30 near the Pepacton Reservoir. Stocks tackle appropriate for the East Branch Delaware's bigger water: heavier rods, longer leaders, streamers for fall fishing. The shop's guide-network specializes in the East Branch and Pepacton tailwater sections. ## The Upper Delaware Fly Shops (Hancock) Hancock sits at the main-stem confluence and has historically supported two or three fly shops. Branded inventory varies year to year; the constant is that Hancock shops specialize in the big-water side of Catskills fishing: long-cast dry-fly rigs for the main stem and heavy nymphing setups for the East Branch tailwater. ## What Fly Shops Tell You A partial list of what a 10-minute shop conversation will get you that no online fishing report will: - **Current hatch status** — not what the hatch chart says, what is coming off the water today. - **Flow observations** — yesterday's rain, the current Pepacton release, what the Willowemoc did overnight. - **Which stretches are fishing** — where the pressure is low, which public-access pullouts are holding trout. - **Guide availability** — who is booked, who isn't, who is the right match for what you want to do. The relationship is reciprocal. Buy something. Tie a flashy tip on the local hand-tied patterns rather than the generic commercial stock. The shops stay in business on this. ## A Note on Guide Services The Catskills guide community is small and long-tenured. Most of the best guides work out of one or two shops; the lodges (the Roscoe Hotel, the Beaverkill Valley Inn, the DeBruce, the Arnold House) have their own contracted guides. Rates run $400-$600 per day for walk-and-wade, more for boat trips on the main stem. First-time anglers on the Catskills water almost always benefit from a half-day guide. You can cover more water, learn the current hatch, and get knots retied without burning a morning on them. The shops can match you to a guide the day you walk in for anything but opening-day weekend. ## The Shop Stop in a Weekend Template For a standard Roscoe / Livingston Manor fishing weekend: - **Friday evening** — arrive. Dinner at the Roscoe Diner or the Arnold House. - **Saturday morning, 7:30 AM** — coffee and a fly-shop stop at Baxter House or Beaverkill Angler. Thirty minutes of intel. - **Saturday daylight** — on the water. - **Saturday afternoon** — hour at the Catskill Fly Fishing Center in Livingston Manor. - **Sunday morning** — shop stop before the drive home, restock what you burned through. ## Compliance, Quickly - **21+ only**, licensed shops only. Verify via OCM QR code at [cannabis.ny.gov](https://cannabis.ny.gov). - **No consumption on the water, banks, or at public-access points.** State-managed corridor. - **No consumption at the Catskill Fly Fishing Center & Museum** — private venue. - **No consumption in cars**, driver or passenger. - **Start low, go slow** on edibles, at the cabin in the evening only. ## Where to Go Next - [Fly-fishing the Catskills with cannabis, beginners guide](/blog/fly-fishing-catskills-cannabis-beginners-guide) - [Roscoe — Trout Town, USA](/blog/roscoe-trout-town-cannabis-fly-fishing) - [Livingston Manor — Willowemoc and creative weekend](/blog/livingston-manor-cannabis-willowemoc-creative-weekend) - [Fly-fishing the Willowemoc and Beaverkill](/blog/willowemoc-beaverkill-fly-fishing-water-guide) - [Catskills fishing lodges worth booking](/blog/catskills-fishing-lodges-worth-booking) **This is editorial, not legal advice.**