Angling Tradition and History
in America

America has been important not only because of its angling tradition. For the last 200 years, people have looked at America as new place to start a living anew.

Ok, but why America, the United States, plays such an important role in angling tradition and history? Because despite modern fly fishing was basically "invented" and "imported" from England, it's in the vast landscapes of the new frontier, with larger rivers and the immense Nature of the American continent where fly fishing really took off. And this because of a new affluent "bourgeoisie" and the technical innovations of the period (remember here some important developments, events and services such as the industrial revolution, the cotton and steel industry, the steam trains, the patent office, etc...). Nevertheless, for the angling history's sake, one should not also forget that the last quarter of the XIX century saw a steady decline of the price of agricultural products (because of the beginning of an industrial process in agriculture, the first freezer-cargos, agricultural amchines, etc...) this causing huge migration movements of poor peasants and laymen to the US and South America (e.g. the Italians, the Irish, the Polnish, but also many Swiss to France etc...).

At first people like Charles Orvis (1856) or Hiram Leonard (1869) started to cover the demand for flies and the new hexagonal bamboo rods. Here a short break about these hexagonal rods. from wiki research, you learn that it is debated who invented it. There are two names and dates: Samuel Phillippe and his son Solon (1845) and Charles Murphy (1841 or earlier). The latter assumption has been made by Tom Whittle and Bill Harms in their book Split & Glued By Vincent C. Marinaro. I met Bill in Waischenfeld so I will ask him for some details. Here is what Bill wrote me back:

The "hexagonal" rod in full length seems to be Phillippe's contribution, but Murphy was probably experimenting with six-strip, tip sections at the same time. Most fishermen and makers favored various hardwoods for the butt and mid-sections, while the tips were first to undergo experiments in bamboo. This began in England in the 1830s, but not with six strips, and not with the enamel surface facing outward. Again, this seems to have been Phillippe's and Murphy's idea. I have never found reason to think that Phillippe and Murphy were "comparing notes" (distances and communication in those days were not easily overcome), but they surely would have been aware of each other's work.

In any case, we must distinguish between the "hexagonal" and the six-strip rod. Phillippe and others were making six-strip-rods through the second half of the 19th century, but these were always round in cross-section. The true hexagonal shape (six, distinct flats) wasn't produced until the 1880s by Hiram Leonard and Charles Wheeler in Maine.

This came about only when Leonard invented a mill to shape the taper of a rod on the INSIDE surfaces of each strip, then gluing the strips with taper intact (the method we have taken for granted ever since). Previously, however, makers had glued the six, triangular strips, then tapered AFTER gluing. The taper cut through the power fibers and rounded the outside of the blanks.

Nice explanations eh? And I didn't know that they were working the taper afterwards. This changes everything in my understanding of old rods. I asked Bill for an interview...Check it here soon!
Now, when I think I learned something, I remember about Rolf Baginski's book Split-Cane Rods -- Bamboo Treasures which I ran to read again. Silly me. Rolf explains everythink! I can't underline more the fact that his book has it all. It's really a very nice book. Here is what he says. That English invented the split bamboo rod already in the 18th Century prpbably (there is a quotation from a older book in another old book which says that) and that the Americans (e.g. Samuel Phillippe, b.1831-d. 1877-) developed it as we know it today. That "...the final development...would be unthinkable without the American rod-builders".
This is for what we know concerning the Western world. Nobody knows what happend in China and Japan. Maybe one day we'll discover that split bamboos were available somewhere in Asia much earlier....

By the late 1870s, other talented rod builders such as Fred Divine (1878) appeared. Improvements were made. By the 1890s really modern rods (even by our standards, says Rolf baginski in his book) were starting to be made (e.g. the Kosmic rods) and by the turn of century, around the 1900s, more and more (rich) people moved to fly fishing and fishing. Sometimes, the first reels were as expensive as a worker's month salary and so were the best fishing rods, so you gather that life was not as "romantic" as we tend to think afterwards.

The angling history moved along with bamboo at full speed. New drag systems for fishing reels were perfectioned and patented. The carnage of the First World War (1915-1918) affected only marginally the US - the US had their immense tragedy 55 years before with their civil war, 1860-1865 -. It is a common perception that the years 1900-1930s were the "Golden Era of Classic Bamboo Rods" with names such as Ed Payne (1898), EC Powell (1910), Goodwin Granger (1918). Others say that the period 1920s-1950s is the best moment (and many bamboo rods items for collectors come from this period).

The 1920s were a wonderful time for many Americans, especially in New York (and so the nearby Cascapedia (Canada) , and Catskill areas) money was flowing easyly, Ford was litterally filling the roads and streets with cars. Many contemporary European and foreign visitors could not believe the wealth they could see. Alas, the ecological disaster of the "Dust Bowl" , the 1929 financial crisis- and here Everett Garrison , Paul H. Young, Lyle Dickerson, Jim Payne, entered the scene - , and then later the Second World War saw produced dramatic changes and the end of many manufacturers.

During the II World War, there was a ban in the US to produce sports equipment because all efforts had to concentrate on the warfare. So many rods and reels makers had to make ammunitions, parachute-lines, ski-poles and similar items.

But globally, in the USA, 4 main areas of bamboo rod makers were already well defined: New York, the Detroit area and Michigan, Colorado, and the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington).

Angling Tradition and History in America

Angling Tradition and History
in America