Joan Wulff

Joan Salvato Wulff, also known as the "First Lady of Fly Fishing", is widely regarded as the architect of modern-day fly-casting mechanics and is revered within the sport for her pioneering and many accomplishments. Since learning to cast as a schoolgirl in 1937, she has left a legacy for new generations of fly anglers and taught countless people the art of fly-casting through the school she founded and books she has written. Her demystification of the fly cast, numerous career accolades, and many contributions to the sport have earned her induction into the International Game Fish Association Hall of Fame (2007) and American Casting Association Hall of Fame. She has garnered 20 awards, including the Lapis Lazuli and Lifetime Achievement Awards from the International Federation of Fly Fishers. She was a National Casting Champion from 1943–1960. In distance casting against an all-male competition, she made a record cast of 161 feet.

Joan Wulff was born in Paterson, New Jersey. Throughout her childhood, she recalls that family life revolved to a large extent around her brothers' and father's interests in fishing and hunting, as well as the family's local outfitting shop, Paterson Rod & Gun. This exposure to fishing at a young age proved instrumental to the development of her longstanding passion for angling.

"I became hooked on fishing at the age of five or six, accompanying my parents one bass-fishing evening. Dad fished with a fly rod; mother rowed the boat. Things came together and a bass exploded from under the lily pads to take Dad's bass bug. The bass and I got hooked at the same time."

When she was 10, Wulff asked her mother if she could borrow her father’s fly rod, whom she admired and adored. After a few attempts at casting, the rod came apart, and the top section slid into the water. Fearing her father's reaction, she and her mother summoned a neighbor to retrieve it with a rake. When Wulff’s father found out what had happened, he wasn’t angry — he was supportive, teaching his daughter how to cast with her very own rod. There was no turning back.

After her first fly-casting lessons from her father, she further developed her technique under the guidance of mentor William Taylor and instructors at the Paterson New Jersey Casting Club. Within two years, Wulff was the New Jersey Sub-Junior All Around Casting Champion. Even with her 5-foot stature, she could cast a 5-weight fly rod single-handedly, hitting targets 50 feet away. “Shifting my weight, I used my body to lengthen the stroke,” says Wulff, who enjoyed testing her mettle against male contestants. “She could outcast just about any man,” says New Jersey outdoor writer Al Ristori, who as a kid frequented Paterson Rod & Gun. In the 1930s, distance and accuracy casting was a popular sport, and Jimmy Salvato — a New Jersey game and fish commissioner and outdoors writer — was one of the best. At 16, she was crowned New Jersey State Champion and competed in her first national championship, in Chicago. With her Scottish-born mother, Alexina Sampson Salvato, cheering her on, Wulff won the first of what would become 17 national titles from 1943 to 1960.

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