Fisherwomen

Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby was
Maine’s first registered guide and
someone who could catch. (Right) A
hand-tinted photo from the 1930s.
WOMEN WHO FISH HAVE EARNED THEIR CATCH BY CATHY NEWMAN
The language says it all. Fishermen are … men.
Never mind that a recent U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service survey reports that of 35.8 million
anglers in the United States, 9.8 million, or 27
percent, are female. Even curmudgeons acknowledge the
trend, which isn’t new at all. “Women are here to stay
… in trout fishing as on the golf course and at the ballot
box,” said Fred White, editor of the Anglers’ Club of New
York Bulletin in the 1920s, adding: “They can wear my
second-best waders any time.”
In fact, the history of women anglers precedes White’s
grudging observation by at least three centuries. Joan
Wulff, the czarina of fly-fishing — a woman who gave
casting demonstrations in a gown and high heels, and
flicked a cigarette out of Johnny Carson’s mouth on television
with a single well-placed cast — said, “We are not
starting from scratch; we have a heritage.”
In a conversation edited and condensed for clarity, fly
angler Cathy Newman asked historian David McMurray,
who has researched the subject, to unpack that heritage in
its social context. McMurray, an adjunct assistant professor
at Lethbridge College in Alberta, Canada, describes
fishing there as focused on “typical prairie fare — walleye,
pike, perch in the Oldman River as it runs through town.”
C.N. Let’s tackle the word fisherman.
What do you call a woman who fishes?
D.M. At first, I referred to women anglers in my articles. Then it became
fisherwomen. Then it was simply angler. In 1898, The New York Times
ran a story about “feminine Izaak Waltons.”
“I say I am a woman. Why do you not call me a fisherwoman?” a
woman from New York asked the reporter.
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COURTESY MAINE STATE MUSEUM (LEFT); PEOPLE FISHING, A CENTURY OF PHOTOGRAPHS
This is in contrast to her near-contemporary Izaak Walton, who makes
clear that noble fish such as salmon and trout were reserved for men.
Walton lumps women in with children and says they are good at fishing for minnows or
sticklebacks — that is to say, baitfish. They are also useful for making flies because they are
dexterous. The Compleat Angler (1653) confirms women are fishing, but they are to be in the
service of men. It’s hard not to be anachronistic, but it’s a dismissive and patriarchal view.
The New York angler — who was never referred to by name
— appears to be a remarkable woman. “When I die, this
one rod is going with me in my coffin,” she said. You also
cite Hannah Woolley, who wrote New and Excellent Secrets
and Experiments in the Art of Angling, in her book The
Accomplish’d Lady’s Delight.
It’s an instructive guide published in 1675 and talks about
techniques, bait and species. It’s egalitarian; it opens doors to
women and says, You are going to fish for salmon.
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Three sisters and a friend with a mess
of fish headed for the skillet on a stream
near Bozeman, Montana, circa 1915.
Some question if Woolley actually wrote the guide that’s credited to her. Authorship
of an even earlier work — Juliana Berners’ A Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle,
published in 1496 — is also disputed. Happily, Joan Wulff challenges the naysayers:
“What man would suggest [as Berners does] that to take care of hornets,
bumblebees and wasps for bait one should bake them in bread?”
Wulff makes some astute observations. After all,
why would you attribute their books to Woolley
or Berners if they weren’t the real authors? It could
just be a patriarchal reading. It still happens.
Wulff knows about patriarchy. Pioneering
Florida Keys guide and angler Capt. Richard
Stanczyk tells of taking her saltwater fly-fishing
30 years ago. He didn’t know who she was and
was skeptical. When they got out on the water,
he told his brother to line up the boat so he
could show her how to cast. “I think I understand
this,” she said, then fired out a 100-foot
cast. Tell us about her predecessors, such as
Sara Jane McBride (1845-1880), a pioneer in
the use of entomology in fly-tying, who opened
a tackle shop on Broadway.
McBride, a self-taught entomologist, learned to
tie flies from her father, and researched the life
cycles of aquatic insects. At a time when women
were pushed aside in science, she is hatching
insects in makeshift aquariums and saying that
you need to study the environment and ecosystems
specific to a geographic region — still a
fairly new idea at the time.
A postcard from about 1910 from a shoot at a freak fish
studio. (Left) A snapshot of a stalwart angler at Lake
George. Both images are from the book People Fishing,
A Century of Photographs, Princeton Architectural Press.
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Anglers Journal
PHOTO BY SCHLECHTEN, COURTESY MUSEUM OF THE ROCKIES
How about Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby, sports
journalist and Maine’s first registered guide?
Crosby not only becomes an authority, but she also
markets herself. The state of Maine sends her to set
up a sports exposition at Madison Square Garden
in 1895. Historian Thomas Verde describes how
Crosby “awed the wide-eyed New Yorkers with her
piscatorial prowess by repeatedly casting her rod
over the tanks and getting strike after strike with
a delicate turn of the wrist.” She also participated
in the masculine world of politics; her efforts to
promote conservation and guiding in Maine led to
the creation of the state’s first licensing system for
hunting and fishing guides.
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This photo from Lake Arrowhead,
California, in 1933 looks like an
early fishing cheesecake shot.
You suggest that fishing granted women an
agency and autonomy free of constraints that
might otherwise apply — a “canopy of camouflage
that allowed women to move beyond
society’s restrictions on gender.”
Consider Mary Harvey Drummond, who went
on a fishing trip at the end of the 19th century in
Quebec’s Laurentian Mountains and wrote about
it for Rod & Gun in Canada. Her French Canadian
guide tried to compliment her, noting that
she could fish “better than some of les messieurs.”
Drummond tartly replied, “Some of les messieurs
can’t fish at all, can they?” In her article she writes:
“We women of today talk much about our rights,
and while our tongues wag, we are letting slip by
us the very things we clamour for. In the woods of
Canada, equality with our brothers and husbands
awaits us, and a share in the sports that give health
to body and mind.” It nicely sums up the agency
that some women could find through fishing.
“A basic purpose of costume is to distinguish men
from women,” Alison Lurie said in The Language
of Clothes. What happens streamside? I’m
thinking of the photograph of “Fly Rod” Crosby
in a long skirt with a lap full of trout. Also the
Victorian woman who wrote about “those men
who wear big boots, climb right into the water
up to their knees, and, of course, they catch
trout — who couldn’t?” She’s clearly frustrated —
restricted to skirts instead of waders. Yet she was
a successful angler. It’s what has been said about
Ginger Rogers: She did everything Fred Astaire
did, except in high heels and backward.
For 19th century fisherwomen in North America,
proper clothing was a frequent topic of discussion
because it was tied so closely to gender expectations
in society. To dress outside expected norms
was to call your respectability into question. Finding
the middle ground out on the stream was
incredibly important. For very public women
such as “Fly Rod” Crosby, dressing within the
bounds of acceptability signaled that she was not
radical and could be trusted. When The New York
Times interviewed her, the reporter made sure to
say that she did not wear knickerbockers out in
the woods. The fisherwoman who expressed her
frustration about men being able to wear boots
in the water was addressing more than a minor
inconvenience; it was a deliberate statement
about gender inequality in society. In her satirical
article written in Outing in 1890, she describes the
gradual destruction of her impractical, feminine
clothing while attempting to fish, which I think
highlights the cultural disadvantage fisherwomen
faced. In other words, women had to work harder
than men to catch fish — just as Ginger Rogers
did with dancing.
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COURTESY OF THE BOOK, PEOPLE FISHING, A CENTURY OF PHOTOGRAPHS
Anglers Journal
Clem Enloe, 84, let a photographer
take her picture in 1937 in Great
Smoky Mountains National Park in
exchange for a box of snuff, which is
poking out from behind her blouse. A
tough bird, she refused to observe the
park’s fishing regulations and instead
fished year-round and with worms,
which supposedly were prohibited.
“Are you a little park man or a big
park man?” she’d snap. Without
waiting for an answer, she’d say, “Big
park man or little park man, you son
of a bitch. I fish when I please, winter
or summer. See that can of worms?”
Courtesy Great Smoky Mountains National Park Archives
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