1.2 : History - The Art Of Fishing Develops

The history of sport fishing in England began with the printing by Wynkyn de Worde of the Treatyse of Fysshynge With an Angle (1496) as a part of the second edition of The Boke of St. Albans, which had originally dealt only with hunting. The book was evidently based on earlier continental treatises dating to the 14th century. The artificial flies described in the Treatyse are surprisingly modern (six of the dozen mentioned are still in use). The rods are 18-22 feet long with a line of plaited horsehair tied to one end.

Printing by Wynkyn de Worde of the Treatyse of Fysshynge With an Angle (1496).

The first period of great improvement came about the mid-17th century, when Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton were writing the classic The Compleat Angler and Col. Robert Venables and Thomas Barker were describing new tackle and methods of fishing.

About this time some unknown angler attached a wire loop or ring at the tip end of the rod, which allowed a running line, useful for both casting and playing a hooked fish. Barker in 1667 mentions a salmon-fishing line of 26 yards. What was obviously needed was a means of taking up and holding such lengths and this led to the invention of the reel.

Experiments with material for the line led to the use of a gut string (mentioned by the diarist Samuel Pepys in 1667) and of a lute string (noted by Venables in 1676). The use of a landing hook, now called a gaff, for lifting large hooked fish from the water was noted by Barker in 1667.

Improved methods of fishhook making were devised in the 1650s by Charles Kirby, who later invented the Kirby bend, a distinctive shape of hook with offset point that is still in common use worldwide. Kirby and his fellow hook makers, who were also needle makers, were dispersed from their shops near Old London Bridge by the Plague and the Great Fire of London in 1666, and they ultimately established factories in Redditch around 1730.