Ancient Fly Fishing Text

[SilverCreek 0]

Oldest “book” of fly patterns discovered in a Benedictine Monk’s Prayer Book. Watch the video.

http://www.thefield.co.uk/fishing/oldest-fishing-book-in-the-world-watch-the-report-26927

[djtrout 0]

Utterly fascinating. Knowing how we are today, I'll bet that monk-priest wasn't the only one around who played with scripting his patterns.

Then again, the number of people scribing things in that era was certainly miniscule by today's standards.

If I had 125k English pounds, God help me, I'd be tempted ....

The holes the archivist hasn't been able to fill in certainly titillate the imagination!​

[126lineman 0]

Very interesting story, thanks for posting it. That would be something to decode those patterns and tie them up to see what they looked like.

[Gene L 0]

Dame Juliana Berners wrote "The Treatise on Fishing With an Angle" in 1420, and it has a section on fly fishing. This was 30 years before the Monk's book, and it's in English. It has great instructions on flies, bait, and rod making.

 

AND, you can download it for free, either in Middle English or in modern English. A fascinating read.

[SilverCreek 0]

Gene. I thought Berners also. I looked her up and found that the earliest published edition was 1486 in two references:

 

"She was probably brought up at court and, after she adopted the monastic life, she still retained her love of hawking, hunting and fishing, and her passion for field sports.^[1] She is the supposed author of the work generally known as The Boke of Saint Albans, of which the first and rarest edition was printed in 1486 by an unknown schoolmaster at St Albans. It has no title-page. The only clue to the authorship of the Treatise, and the only documentary evidence of her, is an attribution at the end of the original 1486 book which reads: "Explicit Dam Julyans Barnes in her boke of huntyng." Her name was changed by Wynkyn de Worde to "Dame Julyans Bernes." .......

 

The treatise on fishing, which was added to the 1496 edition printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and probably had even less to do with Dame Juliana than the original texts, is the first known work on fly fishing."

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juliana_Berners

 

https://archive.org/details/FishingAngle

 

"This Booke was made by Lady Julian Berners, daughter of Sr. James Berners, or Berners Roding, in Essex, Knight, & Sister to Richard Lord Berners. She was Lady Prioresse of Sopwell, a Nunnery neere St. Albons, in weh Abby of St. Albons this was first printed in 1486, 2 H. 7. She was living in 1460, 39 H. 6. according to John Bals, Centur. Fol. 611."

 

http://www.flyfishinghistory.com/dame.htm

[FlaFly 0]

Gene

Where can we download the Dame's treatise in modern English? I'm not an audio-book kind of person.

[Gene L 0]

Here you go: http://flyfishingattheriver.com/fishing2.html

[FlaFly 0]

Outstanding! Thanx

[retrocarp 0]

Really cool information... Thanks

[Gene L 0]

I made a hook from a needle based on that book, and tied my interpretation of one of the flies. Instead of a "wrest" I used a pair of pliers and made a pretty good looking hook that had to be re-tempered. Caught a couple of bream on it. It was pretty basic and I used the eye to thread the tippet (Kevlar thread) through.