Fly fishing is a sport immersed in history and tradition, like an angler’s boots planted in a stream amid swirling eddies. It’s an art, a science, and an obsession. Legends and lore weave in and out of the tactics, techniques, and strategies that form this timeless pursuit of the wily trout.
No one knows exactly when fly fishing started. But we do know it’s ancient. The earliest known records of fly fishing trace back to ancient Rome and Macedonia. Two Roman writers—Marcus Valerius Martialis (known as Martial) and Claudius Aelianus—mention fly fishing in texts that date from between A.D. 100 and A.D. 200. In a poem, Martial wrote, “Who has not seen the scarus [a type of parrotfish] rise, decoyed and killed by fraudulent flies?” A century later, the Roman naturalist Aelianus went into even more detail, describing fish behavior modern that fly anglers will recognize:
“When the fish observes a fly on the surface, it swims quietly up, afraid to stir the water above lest it should scare away its prey; then coming up by its shadow, it opens its mouth gently and gulps down the fly, like a wolf carrying off a sheep from the fold or an eagle, a goose from the farmyard; having done this, it goes below the rippling water. ...
