content: text: 7.6 Examples of Women's Impact

content: text: Sportfishing. Among those who fish for sport, only 27% of U.S. anglers are female (Burkett and Carter 2020).
Underrepresentation of females in sportfishing is ironic, as the first publication on fly-fishing, dating from the
15th century, was written by Dame Juliana Berners, entitled Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle, a publication
that heavily influenced novelty of the sport for European enthusiasts. Though sometimes invisible, women are
slowly changing the world of sportfishing by breaking stereotypes. Future growth of sportfishing will rely on
female anglers, instructors, and guides. Here I share a few examples on women making a substantial impact
through their passion toward fishing. These examples demonstrate women who loved and valued what they
did. If the paucity of female role models discourages females from seeing the relevance of fishing to them, these
examples should inspire.

content: text: Frederick Buller (2013) chronicled the very long list of large
Atlantic Salmon caught by female anglers, which are
outnumbered 200 to 1 by male salmon anglers. Georgina
Ballantine holds the British record for a 64-pound rod-caught
Atlantic Salmon from River Tay, Scotland, in 1922 (Figure 7.5). Joan
Wulff was introduced to fly-fishing by her father when she was
ten and won several fly-fishing accuracy championships before
winning the 1951 Fishermen's Distance competition against all-
male competitors. She became the first female spokesperson for
Garcia Corporation in 1959 and advocated for women anglers in
her writings for Outdoor Life and Rod & Reel. Today, females make
up 30% of participants in the sport of fly-fishing (Recreational
Fishing and Boating Foundation 2021). Joan Wulff participated in
many distance casting events and did trick casting. She snapped a
cigarette from the mouth of Johnny Carson on the TV show "Who
Do You Trust?" (Fogt 2017). Starting in 1978, Wulff opened a fly-
casting school on the Upper Beaverkill River in New York. Her Fly-
Casting Techniques, published in 1987, and New Fly-Casting
Techniques, published in 2012, are classic guides to learning her
techniques. When asked about her favorite fish, she would
respond, "Whatever I'm fishing for," and her favorite place to fish
was "Wherever I am."

content: text: Figure 7.5: Georgina Ballantine holds the British
record for a 64-pound rod-caught salmon from
River Tay, Scotland in 1922.

content: text: Most avid bass anglers can identify Roland Martin, Bill Dance, and Jimmy Houston, who dominated competitive
bass fishing in the first decade of Bass Anglers Sportsman Society (B.A.S.S.) and have had TV fishing shows for
decades. Kim Bain-Moore began competing in bass tournaments at age 19 and in 2009 became the first woman
to compete in the Bassmaster Classic tournament. Only three females have been inducted into the Bass Fishing
Hall of Fame. The first was Christine Houston, who organized the first-ever all women's bass club, the "Tulsa
Bass Belles." But female participation in competitive bass fishing never took off as expected. Fewer that one in
five readers of Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, and Bassmaster magazines are female (Carini and Weber 2017).

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