People Have Fly Fished for Thousands of Years

The oldest and clearest reference to fly fishing dates back to A.D. 200 in a text written by the Roman author Aelian. In his book On the Nature of Animals, Aelian described an "artful contrivance” of fishermen in Macedonia.

“They wrap the hook in scarlet wool, and to the wool they attach two feathers that grow beneath a cock's wattles and are the color of wax,” wrote Aelian, describing an ancient artificial fly. “So they let down this lure, and the fish attracted and excited by the color, comes to meet it, and fancying from the beauty of the sight that he is going to have a wonderful banquet, opens wide his mouth, is entangled with the hook, and gains a bitter feast, for he is caught.” 

Fishing with nets and spears was an ancient practice, but the earliest evidence of fishing with a rod dates to Egypt around 2000 B.C., says Jim Schottenham, curator at The American Museum of Fly Fishing. One remarkable image from the Beni Hassan tomb paintings shows fishermen working the Nile with nets, spears, hand lines and at least one fishing rod.  

While it’s impossible to know exactly when people first started fly fishing, the methods described by Aelian would have developed intuitively from close observation of the natural world. 

“If they witnessed fish rising to take bugs on the surface of the water, they're going to try to imitate that,” says Schottenham. “When you look at a mayfly, you can imitate that as best you can with using wool and feathers, and that's what they were doing. It was knowledge passed down from generation to generation.” 

One of the earliest instructional manuals for fishing with artificial flies was A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, published in 1496. (Angle or “angol” is an Old English word meaning “hook.”) The entertaining text, written in rhyming verse, goes into great detail about the right bait to catch nearly every type of freshwater fish in England, including the best artificial flies to catch trout and grayling in every season. 

In April, for example, a stone fly can be mimicked with a “body of red wool and lapped about with black silk: the wings of the drake and of the red capon’s hackle.” In May, a convincing yellow fly can be tied with a body of yellow wool and the “herl of the peacock tail.” 

According to legend, the Treatyse was written by Dame Juliana Berners, a 15th-century English nun. Could such a book have been authored by a female fly-fisher? It’s possible, says Schottenham. Even if she wasn’t a nun, unmarried noblewomen would often stay at convents, where there was access to nature, and plenty of peace and quiet for writing.  

Unfortunately, there’s no proof that a person named Juliana Berners (or Barnes or Bernes) existed outside of the Treatyse, and most scholars now believe it was a pen name and a savvy bit of marketing.  

“Nonetheless, it’s one of the most complete, early accountings of how to fly fish,” says Schottenham.  

The Compleat Angler was a wildly popular book written by Izaak Walton in 1653 that combined practical instruction with folksy philosophy (and even some songs!) about the environmental, social and spiritual merits of fishing.  

“God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling,” wrote Walton. 

Walton published The Compleat Angler in the aftermath of the English civil wars and it promoted recreational fishing as a balm for the traumatized English soul. Written as a lively conversation between three fictional friends—Venator (the hunter), Auceps (the hawker) and Piscator (the fisherman)—The Compleat Angler is widely cited as the third most-printed book in history after the Bible and the plays of William Shakespeare.  

Schottenham says Walton captured the spirit of fly fishing, which is about so much more than tying the most ingenious fly or even catching fish.  

“There are many anglers today who feel that the experience of connecting with nature is the real draw, not necessarily hooking a fish and putting it in your creel,” says Schottenham. “That's what Walton was all about, too.” 

In the days of Izaak Walton, fishing equipment was crude and cumbersome. Plastic fishing line made from nylon and polyester wasn’t invented until the 20th century. For centuries before that, anglers made fishing line from braided horsehair and other natural materials like linen, silk, catgut (the lining of animal intestines) and even grasses.  

“I can't imagine hooking a large trout and the only connection between you and that fish is a piece of grass,” says Schottenham, “but that's what they did.” 

Before the mid-19th century, fishing rods were made from solid pieces of wood and could be as long as 20 feet. The length was necessary because casting wasn’t really a thing, says Schottenham. A fixed length of line was attached to the end of the rod and the angler dangled the fly out over the water using a technique called dapping.  

In Japan, fly-fishing also goes back centuries. There, fishermen used shorter, more flexible bamboo rods with fixed lengths of line. This method of fixed-line fly fishing, known as tenkara, is still popular in Japan and around the world.  

The American Museum of Fly Fishing is in possession of the oldest confirmed set of artificial flies in the world— known as the “Harris Collection.” One of the flies in the set has a bill of sale signed in 1789. One artificial fly from 1803 included the fly's "recipe,” which called for cuckoo feathers and the “light fur from the sides of a rat.” 

In the West, casting became a key component of fly fishing in the mid-1800s. That was enabled by improvements in both rod and line construction, but most importantly the invention of the reel.  

There are a few intriguing references to reels in the ancient world, including a decorative silver plate found off the coast of Israel that some archaeologists date to A.D. 500 or 600.  

“The detail on this plate is remarkable,” says Schottenham. “It clearly shows a reel positioned as a modern-day fly reel would be positioned on a rod. Also remarkable is that the rod itself has guides. The reason we know that is you can see the line looping between the guides before it comes out of the rod tip.” 

While that early Byzantine date for a fishing reel is debated, a Chinese painting called “Angler on a Wintry Lake” clearly shows a fishing rod equipped with a reel and was painted by Ma Yuan in 1195. Those early reels didn’t spin, though. Fishermen would have rolled up the excess line by hand.  

The first truly modern fly-fishing reel was patented by Charles F. Orvis of Manchester, Vermont, in 1874. The company Orvis founded in the 1850s is still one of the biggest names in fly-fishing equipment.  

"Orvis is considered to be the father of modern flywheel design,” says Schottenham. “The upright, narrow spool and ventilated side plate are still copied today.” 

There was an explosion in the popularity of fly fishing in the late 19th century thanks to Orvis’s flywheel and a new generation of rods. A Pennsylvania gunsmith named Samuel Phillippe is credited with inventing the “split bamboo” rod in 1846, which offered greater flexibility, control and casting distance. 

As crowds of fly fishermen flocked to popular trout streams and rivers in the late 1800s, many fish populations were quickly decimated. Fisheries were also impacted by clearcut logging practices, which removed the critical shade that kept the water cool. Fly-fishing clubs in New York and Pennsylvania were some of the first groups to talk about environmental conservation as a way of preserving their beloved pastime.  

The first large-scale fish hatchery for trout was built by Seth Green in New York in the 1860s, and soon both fish and fish eggs were being shipped across the country to restock rivers and streams. But restocking alone wouldn’t save wild fish populations.  

“Fly fishermen realized they needed to start thinking about other things, like water quality, deforestation, these other aspects that were starting to impact the health of rivers and fish,” says Sam Snyder, co-editor of Backcasts: A Global History of Fly Fishing and Conservation. 

One of the major conservation developments in fly fishing happened at the individual level with the advent of “catch and release.” As early as 1864, the influential writer Thaddeus Norris boasted in The American Angler’s Book of releasing as many fish as he caught. And in the early 20th century, George Parker Holden promoted the use of barbless hooks, which made it far easier to quickly release fish unharmed.  

But it was fly-fishing pioneer Lee Wulff who famously declared in 1939 that “Game fish are too valuable to be caught once.” Expanding on the merits of catch and release, he wrote, “The fish you release is your gift to another angler and remember, it may have been someone’s similar gift to you.” Wulff’s credo caught on and forever changed the ethos of the sport.