A 16pp ink on paper manuscript of c.1850-60 in which its unknown English author offers ‘Directions for tying salmon flies’ – $700 (£590) at Bonhams New York.
Many of them came from the Charles B Wood III collection, which focused on salmon fishing. Some works were quite modern, but the big catch, at $20,000 (£16,835), was the original manuscript for Chapter VIII of Dean Sage’s 1888 book, The Ristigouche and its Salmon Fishing.
Shown above is a 16pp ink on paper manuscript of c.1850-60 in which its unknown English author offers ‘Directions for tying salmon flies’. The outside cover serves as the title-page and the only illustration is one of four full-size drawings of eyeless salmon fish hooks. It made $700 (£590).
Sold at $16,000 (£13,470) as part of that same angling collection was … A discourse, utter’d in part at Ammauskeeg Falls, in the fishing season, 1739. The work of Rev Joseph Secombe, it was published in 1743 and put forward its author’s belief that “Business and diversion [was] inoffensive to God, and necessary for the comfort and support of human society”. One cannot help wondering if Secombe himself was a keen angler.
