Every so often is published a book that stands head and shoulders above all others in its field. Andrew Herd’s The History of Fly Fishing is such a book. Although its cover price may seem a wee bit high, it is great value for money, for its 440 pages are crammed with information. It is true that the book has lots of illustrations, but they have been carefully chosen to add to the words and not to prettify. Today, too many factual books are picture books with little meat. This one is a great, meaty read.

Andrew begins at the beginning, or as near to the beginning as is possible, for there are no written or artistic records of fly fishing in the years BC. But he surmises, probably correctly, that someone – perhaps in China – tied bits and pieces of feather to a primitive hook as long ago as 3000BC. The first definite written record comes much later, in about 200AD when the Roman Claudius Aelianus penned a little volume called On the Nature of Animals. Many writers have quoted Aelianus, me included, but Dr Herd tells us far more of Aelianus, of where he lived, and of the fly that was then tied to catch trout in a river then called Astraeus. That river is today called the Arapitsa, the trout a subspecies to that area (Salmo trutta macedonicus), and the artificial fly that was described matched one of two common land-bred flies found in that part of south-eastern Europe. That first published fly pattern was called Hippouros, and had a body of red wool and wings of two wax-coloured cock hackles. How many different fly patterns have been published since then? Your guess is as good as mine!

The development of artificial flies is a fascinating story, especially when styles of flies were created to match different situations: flies for catching salmon, dry flies and wet flies for trout, flies for pike fishing and for catching other species like chub and perch, and more recently flies for catching sea fish. But alongside the evolution of the artificial fly has been the development of the tackle used in putting the fly on or in the water, and used in hooking and landing the fish.

I attended the CLA Game Fair this year, and saw fly fishers picking up the newest carbon fibre (‘graphite’ in Americanese) rods and saying things like, “That is a bit too tip action!” or “That’s nice and light!” or “I like the reel seat and rod rings!” I also saw fly line tapers to suit every fishing situation: perhaps DFWFCSS3-4F... in this case a dry fly, weight forward, chalkstream special 3-4 weight floater ... and a SWF/NZTNCS5F... a Spider wet fly/nymph, zoom taper, north country special 5-weight floater. To go with these I expected to find new, special leaders of a material that is ultra fine and ultra strong, where the tippet is 10X with a breaking strain of 50lb! Well, not really. But we are getting there.

But go back in time to really heavy rods made out of ash poles and greenheart, and lines made by knotting together the hairs from stallion’s tails (because they get soaked with urine, the hairs from mare’s tails are too weak). Then the leader was also horse hair, tapering as the number of hairs was reduced. At the British Fly Fair International in June I was shown a trout rod that is used without a reel, the line fixed to a very flexible rod top. That is as it was, for the reel was first described (in Britain) in 1651 so that fly fishing with a reel has been going on for centuries less than fly fishing without a reel. As for hooks, today we can purchase hooks for every purpose with quite precise sizes; less than two centuries ago it was impossible to go into a tackle shop and say to the chap on the other side of the counter, “A dozen Esmond Drury salmon trebles, size 8, and 25 size 22 trout dry fly-hooks, please!”

As for fly-tying vices and materials ... When I started fly fishing just over 50 years ago I had no vice and tied the simple flies of my home region in my fingers. The only hackle pliers were the ‘Engish’ brand that broke hackles easily, bobbin-holders were crude, and scissors were fine-pointed nail scissors. The thread was Pearsall’s silk, and fur and feather mostly taken from the local wildlife. My first trout rod was fibre glass and had as much backbone as a cow’s udder. The line was one of the first plastic lines, double taper so that, when the front end wore out, you could reverse the line (in practice you couldn’t, for the rear tapered bit was set into a stiff long coil).

Today, I have a fantastic vice, scissors specially made for fly tying, great Dorin Loop hackle pliers, and wonderful Matarelli bobbin holders loaded with fine strong threads. I have boxes containing a wonderful array of synthetic and natural materials. And where would I be without CdC? My rods are nearly all carbon fibre (I do occasionally take my cane rods for a walk by the river): light, great for casting accurately and for playing fish. The leaders are all specially tapered and of finer, stronger monofilaments than nylon.

The question is, how did people catch trout, salmon, sea trout, grayling and so on without the kit that we today consider essential? In another hundred years time, will fly fishers be writing about the archaic carbon rods and plastic-coated fly lines, just as Dr Herd has talked in this book of greenheart and split-cane, silk lines and cat gut?

I heartily recommend this book to you. You will read and re-read it many times. Currently, my copy is by my bed and sends me to sleep thinking, “They caught trout with that?”