Fly Fishing in 19th Century Appalachia

Today, North Carolina boasts a large fly fishing industry, contributing to both tourism and development of the sport itself. But this interest in fly fishing in the Tar Heel State is not new; people have been actively fly fishing the waters in Western North Carolina since the nineteenth century. In fact, it was during the nineteenth century that the style of fly fishing really began to change. During the 18th century, use of the reel became widespread and the use of the short rod became less common, until by the beginning of the 19th century it was quite unusual to see a trout fisherman with a rod much shorter than 11 or 12 feet (Whitelaw 28-29). These long rods can be seen in the pictures to the right. Taken in 1904 by Horace Kephart, these fly fishermen are trout fishing with long rods, which is to be expected, but what is not expected is the seemingly missing mounted reels. Fly fishermen started attaching reels to fly rods in the mid-19th century ("History"), and yet there are no tell-tale lumps anywhere on the fly rods in any of the pictures on this page. This oddity is likely do to the homemade nature of the fly rods these men were probably using as purchasing fishing supplies did not become popularized in the area until the 20th century ("Fly Fishing Resources").

Fishermen in the 19th century would have made most, if not all of their fly fishing supplies, including the rod, reel, line, tippet, and flys ("A brief history of fly fishing"). The rods were usually made of two different pieces of wood: oak for the bottom, as it was sturdy and would not split easily, and ash for the top, as it was pliable but not easily broken. The line was made almost exclusively of braided horsehair until the early- to mid-20th century when synthetic materials started being introduced ("History"). The flys are still tied today in largely the same fashion as they were in the 19th century, which is mostly due to a book that became popular in 1836. Authored by Alfred Ronalds, who had had the inspired idea of linking illustrated dressing of his set of patterns with illustrations of the insects they were supposed to imitate and this book, The Fly-Fisher's Entomology went to over a dozen editions and became the benchmark for all the works that followed it. Ronalds also provided a classification of all the insects he had tried to imitate, which was a huge breakthrough, because prior to that, stream side insects were given different names in different parts of the country - in some cases there were more than a dozen different names ("A brief history of fly fishing"). 

Pictured to the left is Frank Fry "fly fishing," as he himself labeled it, in what appears to be his Sunday best from his personal collection of photos. There is no information attached to the picture, other than the fact that he is fly fishing — we do not know where he was, what year the photo was taken, or why he was dressed so nicely for the task. The photo seems more staged than anything, as if he was posing for a postcard or a newspaper (though to our knowledge this picture can not be found in either of those places).

It is mostly likely that Frank was fishing somewhere near Bryson City where he lived, and which has some of the richest fly fishing history in all of Western North Carolina. The "rod" in Frank's hand is the most interesting part of the picture, as it does not look much like a rod at all. If you look closely, you will see that the stick is smooth down from the knot up, which means it was most likely not a random stick which Frank picked up to act like he was fishing. Frank also has a gutting knife in his shirt pocket, which again gives the impression that he hard left his home with the purpose of catching fish despite his strangely formal outfit. It's possible the Frank was part of the upper-class group of fishermen who fished for entertainment, which is why is clothes were so nice and his rod so antiquated. It did not matter to him if he caught a fish that day; he was only there to enjoy himself and take a picture.