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Fran Betters, a fly fisherman, writer, sport shop owner and the spokesman for the West Branch of the AuSable River for the past four decades, died Sunday in his Wilmington home after a battle with heart disease. He was 78.

Betters is a member of Fly Fishing Hall of Fame. He wrote numerous Adirondack fishing books, including the "AuSable River Guide." He was also a newspaper fishing columnist for decades. In the 1970s, he wrote for the Lake Placid News and more recently for the Plattsburgh Press-Republican.

"He was so humble; he just didn't know how many people people looked up to him," his wife Jan Betters said Tuesday evening. "I've gotten e-mails from Belgium, Scotland. It's amazing how far spread his death already is. It's just amazing."

For the past 47 years, Betters owned the Adirondack Sports Shop on state Route 86 in Wilmington, tying flies and offering advice to anglers. He developed a reputation in the 1960s as a spokesman for the West Branch of the AuSable River. He carried that torch until this summer; his health forced him to stop coming to the shop about a month ago.

"He brought a lot of people into this sport and to this area," said Jerry Bottcher, owner of the Hungry Trout Resort in Wilmington. "The town owes him a great deal of gratitude. He was one of a kind, and the river will miss him."

Those who want to celebrate Betters' life will likely be able to do so in early October. His wife is planning a public celebration that is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 4. She said Fran requested that there wouldn't be a wake or a funeral for him.

"I told him there would be too many people that want to pay their respects," Jan Betters said. "My intent was to have a celebration of his life, and I would announce it on the Web site, and it would be on the riverbank. And anyone who wants to come can come."

In the fly-tying world, Betters was best known for creating the AuSable Wulff and the Haystack series. Those flies were later named among the top 10 trout flies of all time by Field & Stream magazine.

"He was probably one of the most innovative fly-tiers in the country," fishing guide Joe Hackett, of Ray Brook, said Tuesday. "He came up with a lot of different patterns, and a lot of it was because he was on such intimate terms with nature. He knew all the details a trained eye will see."

In recent years Betters' health failed him. He was aware he would likely die soon and openly petitioned for a successor to take over his shop.

"That's the reason he was alive as long as he was," Jan Betters said. "He was trying to hang on until it sold. It didn't sell. There's not even anyone interested at this point."

But the shop will remain open. Jan Betters plans to manage it with the help of Pat Allen, one of Betters' guides in recent years.

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Born into a fishing family

Betters' interest in fishing and the West Branch of the AuSable River developed at an early age. His mother died in childbirth, and he was adopted by Margaret and Victor Betters, who would influence the rest of his life.

"I just happened to be adopted into a family (in which my) dad was a hell of a hunter and fisherman," Betters told the Enterprise in March.

Betters learned everything he could from his father, whom he called the best fisherman he ever met. Growing up just a short walk from the West Branch of the AuSable River, Betters often fished with his father and his father's friends, including Ray Bergman, who authored the classic 1938 fishing guide, "Trout."

Although Betters always loved fishing, as a young adult he had aspirations of becoming a civil engineer, he told the Enterprise in March. But that changed in the 1950s when he suffered a broken back and neck in a car accident in Wilmington. Those injuries kept him bedridden for months, and doctors told him he wouldn't live a long life.

"I couldn't continue with what I was doing, so I went back to what I knew," Betters said in March. "What I knew was fishing, tying flies, building rods. That's been my life. I have no regrets. I was told when I was in the hospital that if I took care of myself, I could probably live to be 40."

Severely hampered by the injuries, he walked with two canes in the months after the accident. But his father pushed him to keep fishing, and Betters would go to the West Branch of the AuSable River, day after day. He often struggled, falling down, but he continued to find hope in fishing. That river gave him reason to live, and his appreciation for it grew.

Over the years, he passed on that appreciation to clients.

"I've seen where a man has gone into Fran, didn't have a lot of money in his pockets and needed something done to a fishing rod," said Wilmington resident David Brookman, who worked briefly for Betters. "Fran took time out of his schedule to do it and didn't charge him anything. One time I brought my grandson in there. Fran took time to talk to him and gave him a fishing lure and signed a book for him. He passed on a legacy to others, and those are the things he should be remembered for."

In the last decade, Betters hasn't been able to fish the West Branch of the AuSable. Some of the last fishing he did on Lake Placid several years ago was with Bill Stahl, who was his head guide for close to a decade. This spring, in an interview with the Enterprise, Stahl talked about how Betters was known for talking about how good the fishing was no matter what the conditions were.

"It didn't matter what was going on; he would tell people, 'This is the best I've seen the river my whole life,'" Stahl said.

That optimism is part of his legacy.

"You are kind of a victim of circumstances, "Betters said in March. "Whatever you are brought up in, you either take to it or you don't - and I did. I loved it."

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Enterprise Senior Staff Writer Chris Knight contributed to this report.