Cortland Line Company
Fly lines braided, coated and tapered in Cortland, New York since 1915.
🏭 American Manufacturing
Our assessment
Company details
Where Cortland Line Company products are made
Fly lines are designed and manufactured in the town the company is named after, and have been since Ray Smith moved the operation out of his clothing store and into the Cortland Wagon Company building. The plant reached 540 employees during the Second World War.
Cortland’s advantage has always been construction. Varying coating thickness over a straight braided core lets the company control taper, shape and feel with a precision that a bought-in line does not offer.
Silk braid to nylon to bonded synthetic coatings to Liquid Crystal polyethylene jackets — the materials changed repeatedly, and each time the development work stayed in Cortland.
The founding year and the statement that fly lines are designed and manufactured in Cortland, New York are published by Cortland on cortlandline.com. The American Manufacturing label reflects that the company’s origin claim names fly lines specifically.
The story
Ray Smith sold clothes. He owned The Model in Cortland, New York, he fished, and in 1915 he decided the fishing line he could buy was not good enough. He used his clothing connections to order raw silk, bought a braiding machine, and started making lines in the room above his store — handing out samples to anglers he met while travelling.
The braiding knowledge turned out to be the whole business. By the 1930s Cortland was known for durable silk fly lines and refined taper construction; Smith patented the first braided fishing line in 1932. During both world wars the same machines made sutures, parachute cord and bomb cord for the armed forces.
The company’s defining product came in 1953. The 333 was the first fly line built with a bonded synthetic coating — it floated without the cleaning, drying and dressing that silk demanded. Leon Chandler, who joined as a 19-year-old accountant in 1941 and stayed more than fifty years, said the name was “our 333rd attempt to get it right.” The 444 followed in 1962 and is still in the catalogue.
Why they matter
Fly lines are one of those products where the American manufacturer never had an obvious reason to leave, because the value is in coating chemistry and taper design rather than in labour hours. Cortland has stayed put for more than a century and kept the development work in the same town, which is why the company can still say it designs and manufactures its fly lines there.
Its influence on the sport runs past its own catalogue. Chandler helped establish the fly line grain-weight system in 1960 — the standard every angler still uses to match a line to a rod, regardless of who made either. He served as president of the American Fishing Tackle Manufacturers Association and spent 22 years on the national board of Trout Unlimited.
Cortland is also honest about what it is. It does not sell a lifestyle around the rod and reel; it sells the line, and it builds different lines for trout presentations, saltwater heat, euro-nymphing and two-handed casting rather than treating every cast the same. That is a manufacturer’s posture, not a marketer’s.
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Frequently asked questions
Are Cortland fly lines made in the USA?
Cortland states on its own website that it continues to design and manufacture fly lines in Cortland, New York. The company does not publish an unqualified origin claim covering every item in its catalogue, so we label Cortland American Manufacturing rather than Made in USA.
Where is Cortland Line Company located?
In Cortland, New York, where the company has been since Ray Smith founded it in 1915.
How old is Cortland Line Company?
Founded in 1915 — more than a century of continuous fishing line manufacture in the same town.
What is the Cortland 333?
The first fly line manufactured with a bonded synthetic surface coating, introduced in 1953. It floated without the maintenance silk lines required and led to the 444 series that followed in 1962.