Did aristocratic/rich 17th C women go fishing?
I don’t know. I know aristocratic women used to go hunting and hawking, but I am not sure about fishing. Poor women may have fished, but it does generally seem to have been regarded as more of a masculine occupation. But I have got a book called ‘Mrs Hurst Dancing’ which is a book of sketches made by a young woman of the upper middle class in the early 1800s, and one of them shows her and her sisters going fishing. So it may have been considered an acceptable activity for women.
