Page 17 - Joseph B. Healy "The Pocket Guide to Fishing Knots"

Looking at Fishing Lines

From the time when anglers began to appreciate catching fish as a sport,
and not only as a skill used to harvest food, the earliest fishing lines were
reported to be made of horsehair and gut, later giving way to silk—the
era was the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These silk lines were
cast with a whippy pole or rod, the precursor to a fly rod. Later, silk bait-
casting lines became popular. The leader on the horsehair or silk line was
gut, a material which was less obvious to fish when underwater and
therefore less of a threat to fish than the heavier silk casting line to which

it was attached. The leader was the transitional piece of the connection
intended to be as translucent as possible so the fish might be fooled into
eating the fly or bait. This principle of using a line less visible or at least
less noticeable to fish paved the way for the nearly invisible lines such as
today’s monofilament (a single strand of extruded nylon, hence the name

monofilament) or fluorocarbon used as the terminal fishing connection.
As noted fishing writer A. J. McClane told readers in his classic book The
Practical Fly Fisherman, “The purpose of a leader is to reduce the visible
connection between line and fly. Obviously, the trout, a fish credited with
keen eyesight, is going to be suspicious of his breakfast if something is
leading it around by the nose.” So, we heighten our deception by adding
a section of line that disappears or blends in with the surroundings, or

does both.
Still, an angler must first decide on a type of fishing line based on the