A bit of fly fishing history

Here is a bit of fly fishing history captured thanks to today's modern technology. Somebody uploaded a famous movie (Salar, The Leaper) on Lee Wulff fishing for atlantic salmon in the Miramichi river in New Brunswick, Canada. Lee Wulff needs no introduction. He is the most famous fly fisherman ever. He introduced us the fly vest as well as the Wulff flies, the Royal Wulff being the most famous one.

It's really amazing how Lee fishes for salmon so differently to what salmon fishing is these days with long spey rods. Here in Holland we have this saying "why do it the hard way, if it can be done easier?". Well, I have never ventured the salmon fishing area to say we are all doing the wrong way, but it sure shows that there is no method that should be seen as the only way. Isn't that why fly fishing brings us so much joy?

Here's the first part of the movie. The second part can be seen here. By the way, don't you just love the opening music?



What really caught my attention in this movie is how Lee catches salmon up to 15 lbs using a small Orvis Superfine rod. The bamboo fly rod that is and not a graphite rod. Orvis introduced graphite rods in the mid 1970's (they weren't called the Superfine series back then, just Graphite). In this movie Lee is using the 6ft ONE piece Orvis Superfine bamboo fly rod (Orvis introduced this rod in 1953). Did you know that this tiny rod weighs a mere 1 3/4 oz.?...

For Orvis geeks only, here's a (huge) list of serial numbers (incl. model name) of nearly all the bamboo fly and spinning rods made by Orvis since 1943 to 2004 (and the list is growing every day). Very interesting to see which models were introduced through the years. Warning: this is a VERY LARGE file (almost 8Mb), so it might take a while before it is loaded.

I've heard that Lee has caught even larger salmon using these small rods, just to prove his great ability to cast and catch these mighty salmon. It also shows that the weird idea of bamboo fly rods as vulnerable fishing tools is rubbish. Todays bamboo rods also use much more advanced glues to keep the six strips together. Knowing that I own a rod that shares history with Lee Wulff is kinda nice to know...


Update:
Someone figured out which rod Lee Wulff used in the movie. Lee Wulff owned Superfine #19836 (8/25/56 by Jordan & Reid), which may be the rod he's using in the film. He also owned other Orvis fly and spinning rods including #15270, #15426, #16557, #16693, #18498 and #33096.

Another history fact:
The Deluxe rods were all 2-piece lightweight models introduced in 1952 and went through at least one taper change in the following years. The 6ft one piece rod was named the Superfine. In 1967 Orvis renamed the Deluxe rods to Superfines consisting of three models: 6.5ft, 7ft and a 7.5ft fly rod