Dan Bailey - Early Life

Early Life

Dan Bailey graduated from the Citadel in 1926 and earned a masters degree in physics from the University of Kentucky. He was a teacher in Missouri when he became interested in fly fishing. His next job brought him to Lehigh University where he was able to pursue trout fishing in the central Pennsylvania chalkstreams. In 1929 while teaching at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute he pursued a Ph.D. in Physics from New York University.

While Bailey was in New York, he met and befriended Lee Wulff, another notable fly fisherman. They fished the waters of the Catskills and Adirondacks together and Bailey eventually named a popular series of flies designed by Lee Wulff after him. Bailey learned fly tying while in New York and started teaching classes and selling flies to supplement his income. John McDonald, a noted fly fishing scholar was an early student of Bailey's and became a lifetime friend.

In 1936, Dan Bailey married Helen Hesslein, a nurse and acquaintance of one of his fly tying pupils. They honeymooned on an extended camping and fishing trip in Montana and Wyoming accompanied by his friend and fellow fly fisherman, Preston Jennings, noted author of A Book of Trout Flies. It was during this trip that Dan and Helen began making plans to permanently settle in Montana.

In the summer of 1938, Dan Bailey abandoned his physics education to move West to settle in Montana. The original plan was to settle in Bozeman, Montana but a minor accident with their car going up the east side of Bozeman Pass just west of Livingston forced them back to that town instead. They decided to stay in Livingston and open their fly tying business there instead.