Fly fishing has benefitted from advancements in fly-rod manufacturing technology. Pictured is my 50-year-old Hardy reel milled from a single block of aluminum. The essentials – fir and feathers wrapped on a hook, cast by a rod and line – remain.
There is no consensus of historians about who invented fly fishing. There are references to innovative individuals but there is no single person credited with the invention. Or any recorded date on which the first fish was caught on a fly. But some of the earliest use of feathers and fur attached to a hook to attract fish was observed and recorded by a Roman general named Claudius Aelianus in late 200 AD. Aelianus was impressed by Macedonian fishermen that had tied feathers and wool on a hook and he wrote “… they have planned a snare for the fish, and get the better of them by their fisherman’s craft. …They fasten red wood, round a hook, and fit on to the wool two feathers from a rooster’s neck. Their rod is six feet long, and their line is the same length. Then they throw their snare on the water and the fish, attracted and maddened by the color, comes straight at it. Thinking from the pretty sight to gain a mouthful; when, however, it opens its jaws, it is caught by the hook, and enjoys a bitter repast, as a captive.”
Modern archaeologists have found cave drawings that date back to well before 400 BC that appear to show people casting a feathered lure to rising fish.
It wasn’t until the late 1400s that the first real accounts of “fly fishing” are found in “The Treatyse of Fishing with an Angle.” A general fishing manual, It contained the first known instructions on how to tie fly fishing flies and had instructions on how to make the rods and other tackle. There is considerable debate but The Treatyse is believed to be written by Dame Juliana Bernes. A Brit, Dames Juliana lived in a Catholic nunnery and developed her flies and tackle for fishing in England. The debate enters because women in the church were seldom allowed to sign their name to their own writings. So only fly fishing tradition, not a provable fact has come to recognize Dame Juliana Barnes the author of The Treatyse and the person responsible for principals of fly fishing others will eventually advance.
