Fly Fishing

The Fly Fishing Bait - An Artificial Fly

Fly fishing is the sport of catching fish with hooks tied with fur, feather and other artificial materials. Fly fishing is the art of presenting an articifical fishing fly to a trout, salmon, sea trout or other fish.

Artificial fly fishing flies are created by tying hair, fur, feathers, or other materials, both natural and synthetic. The first fly fishing flies were tied with natural materials. The fly fishing flies are tied in sizes, colours and patterns to match local terrestrial and aquatic insects, baitfish, or other prey attractive to the target fish species.

Fly Fishing - An Art Form

In fly fishing, fish are caught by using artificial fly fishing flies which are hand tied that are cast with a fly rod and a fly line. For fly fishing the fly line is heavy enough in order to send the fly fishing fly to the target fish.  Artificial fly fishing flies can vary dramatically.

Fly fishing means casting line rather than lure. By design, a fly fishing fly is often too light to be cast, thus follows the unfurling of a fly fishing line, which is heavier, tapered and therefore more castable than lines used in other types of fishing.

Fly fishing is an art form. Casting a single fly of team of 2 or 3 fly fishing flies is not as easy as it looks. Rolling a fishing fly so it lands on the water perfectly in front of a hungry trout is the true art of the fly fisherman.

Fly Fishing Flies

Generally, fly fishing flies are categorized as either imitative or attractor. Imitative fly fishing flies resemble natural food items. Attractor fly fishing flies trigger strikes by employing characteristics that do not necessarily mimic prey items. Fly fishing flies can be fished floating on the surface (dry fly fishing flies), partially submerged (emergers), or below the surface (nymphs, streamers, and wet flies).

Fly Fishing - History

Fly fishing has been about for over 2000 years. In his book De Natura Animalium, Claudius Ælianus (170-230 A.D.), often called Ælian, mentioned fly fishing for trout for the first time. He explained that fly fishing was practiced on the river Astræus in Macedonia.

Fly Fishing in the UK

Modern fly fishing is normally said to have originated on the fast, rocky rivers of Scotland and northern England. Other than a few fragmented references, however, little was written on fly fishing until The Treatyse on Fysshynge with an Angle was published (1496) within The Boke of St. Albans attributed to Dame Juliana Berners. The book contains, along with instructions on rod, line and hook making, dressings for different fly fishing flies to use at different times of the year. The first detailed writing about the fly fishing comes in two chapters of Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler (1653).

British fly fishing continued to develop in the 19th Century with the appearance of several books on the subject of fly tying and fly fishing techniques. In southern England, dry fly fishing acquired an elitist reputation as the only acceptable method of fishing the slower, clearer rivers of the south such as the River Test and the other chalk streams concentrated in Hampshire, Surrey, Dorset and Berkshire. The weeds found in these rivers tend to grow very close to the surface, and it was felt necessary to develop new techniques that would keep the fly fishing fly and the line on the surface of the stream. These became the foundation of all later dry-fly developments. However, there was nothing to prevent the successful employment of wet flies on these chalk streams, as George Edward MacKenzie Skues proved with his nymph and wet fly fishing techniques. To the horror of dry fly fishing purists, Skues later wrote two books, Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream, and The Way of a Trout with a Fly, which greatly influenced the development of wet fly fishing. In northern England and Scotland, many anglers also favored wet fly fishing, one of Scotland’s leading proponents of the wet fly in the early-to-mid 19th century was W.C. Stewart, who published "The Practical Angler" in 1857.

Elsewhere attitudes toward methods of fly fishing were not nearly as rigidly defined, and both dry and wet fly fishing were soon adapted to the conditions of those countries.

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