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To say that fly fishing has a long tradition is an understatement.The rod and fly predate the birth of Christ, perhaps going back to the late Iron Age, and appear to have been used fron ancient Europe to China. The Macedonians were fly fishers, and so were the Greeks; the poet Theocritus mentioned the "bait fallacious suspended from the rod" in the third century B.C.. Five hundred - odd years later, the Emperor Diocletian, after a 20 year career of putting the Roman house in order and persecuting Christians, retired to a life of fly fishing on his private trout streams.
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"A twelve foot, four inch wooden rod exhibiting Conroy Ferrules and Butt Cap.
It was reportedly built in Maine, and has the rare three to four inch extension below the reel seat found on rods built prior to 1860. The bamboo tip case appeared during this early period. " - from AJ Campbell's, "Classic and Antique Fly Fishing Tackle". |
One of the first known illustrations of a rod appears on the floor of the Cathedral of Constantine, built around the year 330 by Diocletian's successor. This mosaic shows a rod with a liberal amount of spare line between the rod tip and angler. At least two more illustrations show coils of spare line, including a Chinese drawing by Tu Shu Chi Ch'ing and the Mount Nebo mosaic, both dating to the sixth century. The first English mention of the fly rod, by the mysterious Dame Juliana Berners, came in the "The Treatyse of Fysshnge Wyth an Angle"' published by Wynkyn de Worde four years after Columbus discovered America. The gizmo that would eventually become the reel had been used in China for 1,000 years, but was unkown in Britain until the 1640s or 50s.
It's in the British Isles that the earliest antique fly tackle gathers dust and that the story of the classic rod begins. First constructed with a yew, juniper, or blackthorn butt section (the staff) and a hazel tip (the crop), the ancient fly rod made do without a reel. The typical 15 foot rod equipped with a line of equal length could make a 30 foot cast, however - long enough for a lot of modern trout angling. While the earliest rods had no guides, they featured a loop, or "noose," of line wrapped to the very tip. This very old ingenuity, dating back to the well-trodden illustration on Constatine's church floor, allowed the angler to do two things: actually "shoot" a small amount of line on the initial cast, and give extra line to the occasional large fish. This rig needed little improvement, except for the addition of the upstream cast, the dry fly, and something to hold the excess line.
These hand-fashioned items were the direct ancestors of the fly rod as we know it, and remain littlec hanged from 1550 until the industrial revolution spawned the modern tackle industry after the Civil War. Then, in the space of one generation, the classic fly rods and reels were born - a supernova of tackle.
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"Wooden Fly Rod from the 1860's. Rods of this period began to incorporate the metal band at the top of the grip. This is the fore runner of the winding check on today's rods. " - Image from AJ Campbell's, "Classic and Antique Fly Fishing Tackle". |
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