American Fly Fishing: A History

by Paul Schullery

Book Overview

Fly fishing has a rich, varied, and often misread 250- year history in America. This classic account of America's favourite pastime - from colonial time to the present - explores the literature and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0941130320
• ISBN13: 9780941130325
• Release Date: January 1987
• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 1.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 8.6" x 11.3"

Customer Reviews

A Fishing Journey: Colonial America to the 21st Century

As one casts for trout with a modern high-tech rod, line, leader and one of the zillion fly patterns now available, it is easy to forget how far we have come in the 250 or so years that fly fishing has been practiced in North America, and yet how little things have really changed in terms of the techniques used, concepts of what constitutes necessary equipment, and the attitude of serious endeavor that pervades all aspects of fly fishing. Paul Schullery has complied an exhaustive volume that takes the reader from old world origins of the sport and how they influenced Colonial American fishing, and in particular, fly fishing,to the advances in tackle and techniques during the Victorian era, and finally to our modern practices. The reproductions of portraits and early prints, the quotations from period news sources, journals and books, and the high-quality photographs of the flys, rods and reels from the early 1800's and thereafter make this book a source of great value to anyone specifically interested in fly fishing as a sport, and the developing history of fishing and fly fishing in North America from the time of the first Europeon contact, in Colonial America, and thereafter. It shows, in the final analysis,that despite the high-tech materials we now expect when we purchase rods, reels and related fly fishing equipment, our forefathers, with their spliced rods, wenches, and horse hair lines, would have well understood the how and the why of fly fishing as now practiced, and that in some respects, they were closer to such truth as may exist in this never ending pursuit with a fly for trout and lesser fish, than we might have anticipated.