HISTORICAL 17 



FIRST BASS FLY FISHERS 



The first fly fishers for bass undoubtedly were the 

 early residents of northern Kentucky, the same good 

 people who developed bait casting and brought the 

 multiplying reel to its present perfection. These men 

 were of British ancestry, educated and of more than 

 ordinary abilities in many ways. Some of them were 

 well-to-do; all of them found ample leisure to indulge 

 their hobby. We suppose that they, or their fore- 

 bears, brought fly tackle with them from their old 

 homes and northern Kentucky, being neither moun- 

 tainous nor far enough north for trout, they no doubt 

 used this tackle for taking the bass that were plentiful 

 in the near-by streams. Dr. Henshall informs me that 

 the first man to take up fly fishing for bass seriously 

 was J. L. Sage, the reel maker of Frankfort, Ky., later 

 of Lexington. He made a rod and reel especially for 

 fishing for black bass with flies as early as 1848. 



NORTHERN WRITERS 



While these early bass fishers were plying their 

 craft in Kentucky, bass fishing did not receive the at- 

 tention it deserved in the North. Frank Forester 

 (Henry W. Herbert), the popular sporting writer of 

 his day, probably never caught a black bass. In an 

 appendix to his "Field Sports" (1847) he says: 

 " Other fish there are, the name of which is legion ; 

 the best, perhaps, of these, and the most sporting 

 after the Trout is the Black Bass of the lakes, 



