Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

192 ^LIAN—FIRST ARTIFICIAL FLYwere used, and are specially stated to have been used fortying only the Macedonian fly, and that this special statementof such uses is meant expressly to differentiate the Macedonianfrom all other ways of fishing, and thus constitutes the firstmention of an Artificial Fly, I counter by a couple of queries.Why in XII. 43, and XV. 10, are these self-same wools andfeathers set out among the necessary ordinary requisite tackleof a fisherman, if they were not used for dressing a fly, perhapsmore primitive but still Artificial ? And, if they were not soused, to what other fishing purpose can they be fairly applied ?Again, let us for a moment grant that the Macedoniandevice was the absolutely new invention or the striking departurefrom all preceding angling methods, which, hadartificial flies not previously been well known, it most certainlywould have been. In this case, surely vElian, meticulous inhis examination and classification of the tackle, etc., neededfor each of the four stated kinds of fishing, would have employed,when about to tell of this invention, words calling more instantattention to and far worthier of this great revolution than thesimple, " I have heard of the Macedonian way of fishing, andit is this " !As supporting my contention, a further point must benoted. In the list of tackle in XII. 43, wools and feathers arementioned in a general manner, but in XV. i, their use isparticularised and elaborated. Similarly in the first passagethe making and material of Rods are given, but in the second(and here only) the particular length of rod is stated.It is on these passages (XII. 43, and XV. 10) and on theirnatural implication, that I chiefly found my conclusion that(A)the practice of making up and fishing with some kind ofartificial fly had been in more or less general use for a long timeprevious to the Macedonian device, and (B) that the deviceis quoted merely as an instance of a special, local, and improvedadaptation of such usage—in a word as le dernier cri in flies !If in Martial {Ep., V. 18. 8) musco, not musca, should be^^ If Sandys {antea, 185, note 4) be right about ^Elian's work being"mainly borrowed from Alexander of Myndos," first century a.d., theartificial fly was probably well known in Martial's time.