My question is simple: Which came first Tenkara style fishing or earliest style fly fishing? From Wikipedia I found this: Many credit the first recorded use of an artificial fly to the Roman Claudius Aelianus near the end of the 2nd century. He described the practice of Macedonian anglers on the Astraeus River. And than another reference dating earlier: In his book Fishing from the Earliest Times, however, William Radcliff (1921) gave the credit to Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis), born some two hundred years before Aelian, who wrote:
...Who has not seen the scarus rise, decoyed and killed by fraudful flies...
Wiki give the history of Tenkara as: The first reference to tenkara fly-fishing was in 1878 in a book called "Diary of climbing Mt. Tateyama" written by Ernest Mason Satow, an able linguist and British diplomat during the early modernization of Japan.[3] Tenkara fly-fishing originated with professional fishermen in the mountain streams of Japan who found it an effective method of harvesting the local fish, Yamame, Iwana and Amago. But I can't imagine they didn't begin earlier. Does anyone have better information?