On her way to Ithaca, retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor stopped in the Catskills Oct. 20 to fish and visit the Catskill Fly Fishing Center and Museum in Livingston Manor.

Robert Barker/University Photography

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, left, fly fishes on the Willowemoc River with Judy Van Put, professional fly fishing guide and photographer, and her husband Ed Van Put, professional fly fishing guide and author, Oct. 20.

She was joined by Stewart Schwab, Cornell Law School dean; Mitchell Lasser, Cornell law professor (on leave this semester at Yale); professional fly-fishing guides Ed and Judy Van Put and others. Schwab once clerked for O'Connor, as did Lasser (and his mother-in-law, Barbara Woodhouse).

O'Connor has been avidly fly-fishing for three decades and regularly took her law clerks on annual fishing outings -- during her years in Washington, D.C., it was often along the Potomac River.