“Hooked” at the National Sporting Library & Museum

Photos by Focal Point Creative

On March 18, the National Sporting Library & Museum held its first ever fly-fishing event. Local experts Cody Barber, Jimmy Aliff, Alan Short, Jessica Callihan and Scott Osborne were on hand to provide background along with hands-on practice in one of America’s most popular turf and field sports.

This freshwater pastime is often considered half sport, half theology. References to fly fishing date back to the 2nd century and the first written treatises are from the 15th century. Since then, it has been a topic of poetry, countless written works and more recently even movies.

Technological advances led to a 19th century expansion of the sport and fly-fishing continues to be a popular form of sport and recreation that has endured into the modern age.

Unlike casting a weighted line, fly-fishing is the art of casting the line itself. Thus, it is something of an art form, a field sport and by many accounts a form of meditation. In any case, the National Sporting Library & Museum event was a successful effort to generate even more interest in this historic form
of angling. ML