"Fly fishing" isn't as easy to define as it seems at first, but one thing we do universally agree on is the necessity of an artificial lure, preferably made out of natural materials. Going by that definition, the aboriginal inhabitants of Santa Catalina Island (in the Solomons - not off California) may well have developed one of the earliest--and most amazing--methods of fly fishing ever.
Like gar, needlefish of the Santa Catalina waters lack mouths big enough to eat and be hooked by conventional fishing hooks. So, the Catalinans have improvised, using a locally-harvested spider silk (nearly as strong as kevlar) as a lure. To reach the needlefish, these ingenious anglers fly kites high over the water, with the lure dangling on top of the sea from a string, suspended from the kite.
At its base, this is the same system as a nymph-and-indicator rig. When the kite drops (i.e the "indicator") then the fisherman knows he's caught a fish. More modern kite fishing rigs are actually for sale (for bluewater, no less) in some New Zealand locations, but nothing matches the ingenuity of the original.
(Clip from the BBC-Discovery Channel collaborative series "Wild Pacific," currently airing in the U.S. on Animal Planet.)
What do you think of kite fishing with spider silk? Does it count as primitive "fly" fishing? Let us know in the Comments section!
Some time back I added a page to my kite site on the topic of fishing kites. However, my research for that page didn't uncover anything quite as unique as the Solomons Islands technique described! I wonder how their kites were constructed... Perhaps leaves bound to twigs like the ancient Maori kites from New Zealand?