Willie Robertson - The American Fisherman: How Our Nations Anglers Founded, Fed, Financed, and Forever Shaped the U.S.A.

WE THANK our families; our editor, Peter Hubbard, and his colleagues at HarperCollins including Nick Amphlett, Heidi Richter, and Lauren Janiec; our agent, Mel Berger, and his assistant David Hinds at William Morris Endeavor; our copy editor Tom Pitoniak; Jack Vitek of the International Game Fish Association; Dave Precht and Helen White of Bassmaster Inc.; historian Paul Schullery; and Melanie Locay of the New York Public Library.

GREAT MOMENTS IN
AMERICAN FISHING

The history of American angling is the story of countless great momentsof discovery, excitement, frustration, and joy. Often they are simple moments between friends, between parents and children, or just between an angler and a river. Here are some other great moments in the history of American fishing.

Early 1800s: The modern multiplying, baitcasting reel is originated by Kentucky watchmakers George Snyder and Jonathan Meek, who applied their expertise on intricate gearing to fishing reels.

1811: Julio Buel accidentally drops a spoon into a lake in Vermont from his rowboat. To his surprise, a large bass appears, gobbles the spoon, and vanishes. Intrigued, he experiments with spoon designs and creates the first spoon-style fishing lure; he eventually launches his own factory.

Mid-1800 on: Bamboo rods achieve mass popularity. The innovative designs of master rod maker Paul Young become a gold standard.

Late 1850s: the sport of fly-fishing reaches many spots in the American West.

1865: Dr. C. C. Abbott catches a 4-pound, 3-ounce world-record yellow perch in New Jersey, establishing the longest-standing freshwater record.

Post-1865: Recreational fishing takes off in the United States.

1868: Hiram Leonard pioneers a highly popular, and efficient, split-bamboo fly rod design, and transforms the art of rod building by using industrial manufacturing methods.

1871: Smithsonian Institution director Spencer F. Baird is named the first head of the new U.S. Fish Commission. He oversees a historic fish shuffle of hatcheries and species: eastern brook trout were transplanted to the Rockies and Far West; rainbow trout from the West Coast were sent to the Rockies, Midwest, and East; brown trout from Europe were brought to America; East Coast shad and striped bass were brought to California; and largemouth and smallmouth bass were stocked nearly everywhere.

1872: The American Fish Culturists Association appropriates $15,000 for the U.S. government to begin fish culture development, expanding the federal role in aquaculture.

1874: Seth Green transplants the hardy California (rainbow) trout to the eastern United States, hoping it can supplant the more pollution-sensitive brook trout. It works, and rainbow trout thrive across the East and the upper Midwest.

1874: Charles F. Orvis of Vermont manufactures the first modern fly reel, a breakthrough reel and fly design described by historian Jim Brown as the benchmark of American reel design.

Late 1800searly 1900s: Freshwater fishing is transformed with lighter-weight gear like bamboo rods; lines made of linen, cotton, and silk; and the fixed-spool spinning reel. Much longer casts are now possible.

1893: Mary Ellen Orvis Marbury exhibits her own hand-tied flies at the Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

1905: Lee Wulff is born; he will become arguably the most influential and popular American fisherman. He pioneers the use of light tackle to take game fish, innovates the fishing vest and the hair-wing dry fly, produces TV shows, books, and articles, lands a 10-pound salmon on a No. 28 hook, and, most important, with his wife, Joan, becomes a leading champion of catch-and-release fishing.

1905: Theodore Roosevelt sets aside 150 million acres of timberland, doubles the number of national parks, and creates fifty game refuges and sixteen national monuments.

1909: Norwegian-American inventor Ole Evinrude introduces the first commercially successful outboard motor, a 46-pound, 1.5-horsepower, two-stroke version.

1912: Former dentist Zane Grey publishes blockbuster Western novel Riders of the Purple Sage , becomes the most popular writer in America (60 novels, 13 million copies), and a globe-trotting, record-holding big-game fisherman who spends more than three hundred days each year fishing, usually in the Santa Catalina Channel, off Southern California, on his 52-foot cruiser, Gladiator.

1913: William Boschen becomes the first person on record to land a broadbill swordfish (a 358-pounder) with hook and line, off Catalina Island in 1913. His fishing partner, boat captain George Tuna George Farnsworth, works with Boschen to create the first reel with an internal star drag.

1913: Julius vom Hofe of Brooklyn, New York, invents a reel with an internal drag, which enables catches on lighter line and tackle and helps spread big-game fishing to the Atlantic.

1922: Sportsmen form the Izaak Walton League, one of Americas oldest conservation groups, which helped launch the first congressionally funded wildlife refuge, on the upper Mississippi River.

1929: Winston Churchill visits the Tuna Club of Avalon, on Catalina Island, reels in a 125-pound marlin, orders a scotch and soda, lights a cigar, and says, I see why you chaps enjoy this, its great fun.

1930s: Recreational tuna fishing takes off, with tournaments being held from the Bahamas to Nova Scotia.

1930s40s: President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal dam-building and river and water management projects trigger a sharp rise in forage and warmwater game fish populations, making fishing more accessible to millions of Americans.

1932: Captain Jay Gould catches what may be the biggest fish ever hooked and landed, a manta ray that measured 19 feet, 9 inches from wing tip to wing tip and weighed an estimated 5,500 pounds. The manta was hooked off Florida on a shark hook attached to 1,200 feet of half-inch rope, and a 20-ton crane was used to hoist it from the water.

1932: The Womans Flyfishers Club is founded in New Yorks Catskill Mountains by Julia Fairchild, who served as its president for the next thirty-nine years.

1939: At a meeting at the American Museum of Natural History, the International Game Fish Association is established. Michael Lerner is a key force in founding the group, which grew from discussions he had with Ernest Hemingway and others. The IGFA becomes a leading force for conservation and fishing ethics, and is now the global authority on fishing record-keeping. Lerners wife, Helen, is an accomplished angler as well, supporting marine conservation and becoming the first woman to take a bluefin tuna on the European continent, the first to take nine tuna in one year, the first to catch a broadbill in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the first to take four different species of marlin.

World War II: Three women, Beulah Cass, Bonefish Bonnie Smith, and Frankee Albright, become influential fishing guides in the Florida Keys, pioneering womens involvement in a field dominated by men.

PostWorld War II: Sportfishing is transformed by new technologies and new materials like nylon lines, fixed-spool reels, plastic lures and lines, aluminum, carbon fiber, fiberglass, titanium and graphite rods, transistorized sonar, and GPS devices. Some of this same technology benefits commercial fishing also.

1946: Palm Beach, Florida, boat builder and conservationist John Rybovich Jr. and his brother Tommy establish the prototype of the modern sportfishing boat, the 34-foot Miss Chevy II, featuring an elevated foredeck, flybridge controls and spacious cockpit aluminum outriggers, transom doors, and Rybovich fighting chairs.

1950: The Dingell-Johnson Act authorizes an excise tax on fishing equipment, to fund fisheries management.

1955: Ernest Schwiebert publishes his influential book, Matching the Hatch, a guide for matching artificial trout flies to natural insects, while an undergraduate at Princeton University. More books followed, including Nymphs (1973) and Trout (1978).