It started when a leisure class, based on titled land ownership siezed control of streams and rivers. In England property rights run to the steam center. Own the land, and you own the stream and you own the fish. As a result, you hired private police, called water bailiffs to keep the unwashed out. Given carefully protected fish safe from the snarls and worms of the hoi poli, you can fiddle as you like with artistic forms of angling such as fly casting.
Even today proper British fly fishermen walk the bank in search of rising fish. Wading isn't done. "It disturbs the water." And for most gentlemen fisherman only the properly presented dry fly over a rising fish is totally correct. Proles might note that dry fly fishing for rising fish is, because of its two dimensional nature, far easier than bait fishing. All you need are enough unwary trout to succeed. The British got their trout by controlling access. More democratic Americans do the same thing on private clubs and, of course, by pricing remote waters out of the reach of the working stiff.
Cynics might also note that fly fishermen, as a group, lost their cachet when they moved to "point or strike indicators" that more equalitarian folks call "bobbers." Maybe that's also why today's fly buff, when he or she really needs a fish, slips on a "garden hackle", leech or minnow!
The same Industrial revolution that helped the rich afford to fish for trout with flies helped the common man fish even though that wasn't the intention. Affordable hooks became commercially available from firms like Partridge. So you no longer had to follow Isaac Walton's instructions on bending needles into hooks.
Rail transport improved and, supported by freight fees, the average fishermen could now reach and fish canals cut to carry commerce on leisure where fishing for coarse fish could be had on Saturday afternoons or, absent Blue Laws, Sunday.
