WHICH CAME FIRST


We have all been presented with the question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" I'm certain that I know but since I was not there my belief is only a theory. Much of what we believe is at best based on speculation, especially when it concerns things that cannot be reproduced.


In fly fishing, at least among angling historians, there is a discussion about the origins of fly fishing, and more to point, the origins of dry fly fishing. Pouring over musty old tomes they attempt to assign meaning to words that are written in languages that have long been lost to the mists of time. They extrapolate time lines, they assign dates and they devise a theory. They give us a neat package all tied up with referenced footnotes but the question still remains, which came first?