Personal History: Birth of an Angler

Boulder

Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, just a few years before this story takes place.

It was after morning recess in Mrs. Winter’s sixth-grade class at Mapleton School in Boulder, Colorado. I remember the moment precisely, when the boy behind me, right in the middle of the lesson, leaned over his desk and my shoulder to whisper in my ear that if I’d take a nickel down to Woolworth’s at Broadway and Pearl, I could buy this fishing “thing” with which I could catch lots of fish out at East Dagues Lake. . .

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Fly-Fishing History: The Post-War Era

1936

Before the war, fly fishing and baitcasting ruled angling.

Under correction, I want to make the case that those four short years from 1946 to 1950, immediately after WWII, were a period of expansion in the technology of angling unmatched in the history of the sport. Never before or since has so much happened so fast. So much and so fast that I hardly know where to begin this narrative.

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Fly-Fishing History, Part VIII: The Six Periods in America

Gordon M. Wickstrom

Gordon M. Wickstrom at the London Fly Fisher’s Club.

photo by Linnea Wickstrom

Editor’s note: For the past couple months, we have featured entries from Gordon M. Wickstrom’s The History of Fishing for Trout with Artificial Flies in Britain and America: A Chronology of Five Hundred Years, 1496 to 2000. Now, we wrap things up with an imagined after-dinner speech that Gordon wrote in an attempt to sum up American fly-fishing history by dividing it into six distinct periods. If you’ve been reading this series, you know that Gordon is an iconoclast who goes his own way, and this piece is no exception.

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Fly-Fishing History, Part VII: 1955-2000

Editor’s note: For the last couple of months, we have featured entries from Gordon M. Wickstrom’s The History of Fishing for Trout with Artificial Flies in Britain and America: A Chronology of Five Hundred Years, 1496 to 2000. In this chronology, Gordon marks significant events—the publication of seminal books, tackle developments, important social changes, the dissemination of trout species beyond their native ranges, etc.—on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Fly Fishing History Part VI: 1941-1952

[Editor’s note: For the next few months, we will be featuring entries from Gordon M. Wickstrom’s The History of Fishing for Trout with Artificial Flies in Britain and America: A Chronology of Five Hundred Years, 1496 to 2000. In this chronology, Gordon marks significant events—the publication of seminal books, tackle developments, important social changes, the dissemination of trout species beyond their native ranges, etc.—on both sides of the Atlantic.]

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Fly-Fishing History, Part IV

[Editor’s note: For the next few months, we will be featuring entries from Gordon M. Wickstrom’s The History of Fishing for Trout with Artificial Flies in Britain and America: A Chronology of Five Hundred Years, 1496 to 2000. In this chronology, Gordon marks significant events—the publication of seminal books, tackle developments, important social changes, the dissemination of trout species beyond their native ranges, etc.—on both sides of the Atlantic.]
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Fly-Fishing History, Part III

Editor’s note: For the next few months, we will be featuring entries from Gordon M. Wickstrom’s The History of Fishing for Trout with Artificial Flies in Britain and America: A Chronology of Five Hundred Years, 1496 to 2000. In this chronology, Gordon marks significant events—the publication of seminal books, tackle developments, important social changes, the dissemination of trout species beyond their native ranges, etc.—on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Fly-Fishing History, Part II

Gordon M. Wickstrom

Gordon M. Wickstrom at the London Fly Fisher’s Club.

photo by Linnea Wickstrom

Editor’s note: For the next few months, we will be featuring entries from Gordon M. Wickstrom’s The History of Fishing for Trout with Artificial Flies in Britain and America: A Chronology of Five Hundred Years, 1496 to 2000. In this chronology, Gordon marks significant events—the publication of seminal books, tackle developments, important social changes, the dissemination of trout species beyond their native ranges, etc.—on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Wickstrom is the author of Notes from an Old Fly Book (2001) and Late in an Angler’s Life (2004), editor of The Boulder Creek Angler newsletter, and writer and director of The Great Debate—A Fantasia for Anglers, an imagined debate between Frederic M. Halford and G. E. M. Skues.

Click “Read More” for Part II.

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Fly-Fishing History, Part I

Gordon M. Wickstrom

Gordon M. Wickstrom at the London Fly Fisher’s Club.

photo by Linnea Wickstrom

Editor’s note: For the next few months, we will be featuring entries from Gordon M. Wickstrom’s The History of Fishing for Trout with Artificial Flies in Britain and America: A Chronology of Five Hundred Years, 1496 to 2000. In this chronology, Gordon marks significant events—the publication of seminal books, tackle developments, important social changes, the dissemination of trout species beyond their native ranges, etc.—on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Wickstrom is the author of Notes from an Old Fly Book (2001) and Late in an Angler’s Life (2004), editor of The Boulder Creek Angler newsletter, and writer and director of The Great Debate—A Fantasia for Anglers, an imagined debate between Frederic M. Halford and G. E. M. Skues.

Click “Read More” for Part I.

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