When it comes to fly-fishing headgear, I’m a ball-cap kind of guy. I’ve favored those caps ever since I got my first as an eight-year-old Little League shortstop. My affection hasn’t wavered, and I know I’m not alone. Ball caps are practically the rule on California’s rivers. I recently undertook a semi-scientific study of YouTube videos to verify the fact. True, a few outlier hats did turn up — the Orvis Tilley Wanderer, say, or the traditional Panama — but there was no question that California fly fishers prefer ball caps over all others.
That wasn’t always the case. There was a time when fly fishing was an elitist sport. You could sling bait in any old rags, but you had to dress properly to wet a line on the Test or Itchen in England. If you check out a photo of G. E. M. Skues, the advocate of nymph fishing, you can see what the late nineteenth century demanded. His streamside ensemble consisted of a jacket, trousers, and waistcoat of heavy wool, as well as a shirt and tie. His hat was a homburg. You’d think he was headed for tea with Queen Victoria. The members of England’s Houghton Club (established 1822) were even stuffier, donning fancy topcoats and silk top hats. Their servants came along on their outings, scavenging for naturals the gents used as bait.
The formality continued well into the next century, most rigidly in the UK. As late as 1973, the cover illustration for the Hardy catalog pictured an angler outfitted much like Skues. He’s swapped the waistcoat for a cardigan and the homburg for a bucket hat, but otherwise, he’s just as encumbered.
Americans adopted a more casual attitude after World War II as fly fishing gained in popularity and became more democratic. If we trust the imagery of the period, the average fly fisher wore a plaid flannel shirt and khakis and toted a wicker creel. He might well be smoking a briar pipe. (So-called “blue jeans” sometimes took the place of khakis out West.) Ball caps were still pretty rare. The hat of choice was made of canvas, the type you can roll up and stick into a back pocket. Think Art Carney in The Honeymooners.
I had more trouble locating vintage images of women fly fishers. The earliest indicate that they dressed as elaborately as Skues. They might wear a blouse with a loosely tied scarf such as French artists once affected, along with a dowdy skirt that covered every square inch of their legs. Their hats were straw and decorative enough for an Easter parade. But the dowdiness vanished in the 1940s, when the media chose to take women anglers seriously. The cover shot of Life for May 13, 1946, features a woman in hip boots wading in a lake. She wears a plaid shirt and an Art Carney hat, and a creel’s slung over her shoulder. “Northwest Vacation” reads the caption.
Today, of course, women are a common sight on streams. Catalogs and advertisements often feature female fly fishers, and through social mediums like Instagram they’ve become influencers, helping define what we’ll buy, how we’ll look. These days, that look includes the ball cap.
But when did the ball-cap craze begin? If I’m to hazard a guess, I’d suggest the 1970s or 1980s. That’s when I noticed the sheer number of anglers who were wearing them. At first, the caps bore either the insignia of a baseball team or a manufacturer of farm machinery such as John Deere or Massey Ferguson — tractor caps, if you will. Giants caps were the bestseller in the Bay Area, naturally, although a sprinkling of diehard Dodger fans were in the mix. I couldn’t account for seeing so many Tigers caps until I learned that Tom Selleck wore one on his TV show, Magnum P.I., and inspired the craze.
I bought a Giants cap myself at Candlestick Park shortly after I moved to San Francisco. I began fly fishing at the same time, practicing my casting at the pools in Golden Gate Park, where I bumped into other guys in Giants caps. They were eager to discuss such topics as “ Why don’t the Giants fire Charlie Fox and hire a new manager?” I got so fond of my cap that I wore it on my first fishing trip, to the Stuart Fork of the Trinity. Over a long holiday weekend, I caught so many rainbows I couldn’t count them all. They were planters, sure, but as a rookie, I was thrilled. Then I made a terrible mistake. I attributed my good luck to the ball cap.
Anglers are a superstitious lot, and we’re all afflicted to a degree. The way we cling to certain rituals and routines is almost a form of OCD. How often have I heard a pal say, when the trout aren’t biting, “Hey, I’m gonna try my go-to fly. It never fails.” But does your confidence in the fly contribute to its success, or does the fly possess a super power beyond your earthly control? Even the ancients would puzzle over that. As for my Giants cap, I lost it a year or so later on the Feather River when an autumn wind roared through the canyon and tore it off my head. They could hear me groaning as faraway as Quincy. I bought a new one, of course, but it didn’t have the same magic. Eventually, the Giants lost their cachet in fly-fishing circles. The caps were too ordinary and easy to procure, suggesting a lack of imagination. Anglers wishing to look cool had to search farther afield. Sports other than baseball began to occupy a niche, and new franchises proliferated across the board. You might not be a hockey fan, but that didn’t stop you from donning a stylish Pittsburgh Penguins cap. Clothing giants such as Vans and Timberland stepped up to the plate, and so did the outfitters with their logo caps — the Battenkill Contrast Fly Cap from Orvis, say, and Sage’s Patch Trucker. But I held out for something more esoteric, a limited edition beyond the grasp of most Californians, and found it at last in Boise, Idaho.
What was I doing in Boise? It’s a fair question. I traveled there to pick up a rental car for the drive to the Harriman Ranch, a citadel of Western fly fishing, where the Henrys Fork of the Snake flows. The Henrys Fork isn’t a river for rookies. I’d fallen in among pros who could land a size 22 Adams on a dime. But fortune smiled on me again. My visit coincided with a stonefly hatch so abundant that even a misplaced cast could result in a hookup. The wild browns were gorging, and I caught my share. While I browsed in an airport gift shop on my way home, I stumbled on the ball cap I’d been hoping for — red and white, with a fierce-looking hawk on its crest.
That raptor served as the logo of the Boise Hawks, a minor-league affiliate of the California Angels at the time. I plunked down a twenty and acquired a conversation piece. No one else on the Fall River or the Stanislaus or any other Golden State stream sported one like it, and folks were quick to express their admiration. Where had I found it? Could you buy it online? Nobody had ever been so complimentary about my angling skills. But as an influencer of good luck, the cap was worthless. Often I thought wistfully of my old Giants cap and imagine it had washed ashore downstream. Maybe a fly fisher had rescued it, dried it out, and is hooking trout on the Feather even as we speak.
These days, I’ve gone back to a Giants cap. It would be pointless to compete with all the cool merchandise around. If you want to show off, you can buy a retro version of the 1937 San Francisco Mission Reds cap from Ebbets Field Flannels. The truth is, I no longer care to cut a stylish figure when fly fishing. I’ve gone retro myself and resemble that 1940s angler in my plaid shirt and blue jeans.
The ball cap is a wonderful invention, first worn by the Brooklyn Excelsiors in the 1860s. For fishing, its wide brim is an ideal sun shield. If you want to work on your tan, you can wear it backward. It excels at concealing a bad haircut. On hot days, you can dip it in the stream and cool off without damaging the fabric. And on fishless days, you can turn it upside-down, sit cross-legged by it, and see if anybody feels sorry enough for you to drop in a coin.
