The history of fishing

[rockhopper]

Found this cool article, don't know who wrote it, makes you think.



One of these days while you’re out on the water for a good day of fishing, take a moment between bites to reflect a bit on how much we’ve got it made today. The modern fisherman has all kinds of fishing electronics including GPS and sonar, as well as that cooler full of iced down beer and sodas, and a nice cushy seat to kick back in and prop up your feet while you’re waiting for that big ol’ fish to give you a few announcement tugs. A little history of fishing might make you realize how much you’ve got it made in the shade now.

Man has been fishing probably since near the beginning of time, but it’s not always been about a pleasure trip. Archaeologists have found ancient dumps of shell and bone, cave paintings depicting fishing and even hooks made from bone. Some think that we might be more closely related to the fish we try and catch than we think. The ‘Aquatic Ape Hypothesis’ proposes that man has spent a period of time living by and catching their food from lakes and oceans, and that caused us to look different than apes. If nothing else, it probably made us better fishermen.

In the days of yore, the ancient river Nile was a fisherman’s paradise. Egyptians relied on fresh and dried fish as a staple in their diets, and the diverse techniques they employed have been well laid out in a lot of ancient histrionicses of their lives. While they had a few tools like nets, baskets and even hooks and lines, the fish landed were frequently bludgeoned to death. Perch, catfish and eels were amongst the most significant hauls in the Egyptian era.

On the other hand, Greece, didn’t partake in Egypt’s adoration of fishing. Yet, there is a characterization on a wine cup from 500 BC that depicts a lad bending over a stream with a net in the water under him. It’s ill-defined why he was ‘fishing’ though, because the device is clearly for live capture. There is also evidence the Romans fished with nets and tridents off the sides of boats. One of their most famous Gods, Neptune, is portrayed usually with a fishing trident. There are acknowledgments of fishing in the Bible, as well.

Maybe the most identifiable instrument for angling is the hook. Nobody knows for sure, but it’s very likely early man was employing some variant of a hook over 40,000 years ago. Authorities have had a few challenges narrowing down precise dates as they know almost all the materials used back then were probably wood and not real long-lasting. British Isle fishermen catch fish with hooks created from the hawthorn bush, even today. Though Stone Age man had the tools essential for devising bone hooks, it is difficult for scientists to get accurate dates since bone doesn’t reveal its age well. The earliest recognized hooks have surfaced in Czechoslovakia, but others have showed up in Egypt and Palestine. The Palestinian hooks are thought to be great than 9,000 years old, demonstrating that fishing has been around for a really long time.

Indians on Easter Island formed their hooks from a grisly material. Because human sacrifices were extensive in the region for some time, the natives constructed their fish hooks from the amplest stuff around – human bone. Fish hooks formed of human bone were commonplace there until missionaries came at the turn of the last century. As well as hooks made of stone, bone or wood, ancient man often blended material to make composite hooks with barbs that held the bait on.

So, the next time you get frustrated because you’re fishing electronics have gone out, or your baitcaster has tangled up, just remember how hard it used to be when the stakes were much higher and fishermen depended on catching fish for food. It may not be much consolation when you’re aggravated at your gear, but you’ll think about it later and laugh. Maybe.

[captnemo]

Maybe the most identifiable instrument for angling is the hook. Nobody knows for sure, but it’s very likely early man was employing some variant of a hook over 40,000 years ago. Authorities have had a few challenges narrowing down precise dates as they know almost all the materials used back then were probably wood and not real long-lasting. British Isle fishermen catch fish with hooks created from the hawthorn bush, even today. Though Stone Age man had the tools essential for devising bone hooks, it is difficult for scientists to get accurate dates since bone doesn’t reveal its age well. The earliest recognized hooks have surfaced in Czechoslovakia, but others have showed up in Egypt and Palestine. The Palestinian hooks are thought to be great than 9,000 years old, demonstrating that fishing has been around for a really long time.



all would not have been possible without the invention of the fish hook. Good thread.

[captnemo]

Some other history I found. This was on a site called oldmaster85.com The man was 85 when he first started learning how to use a computer and wrote most of this. Dark I hope it is ok please delete if not.

This is the site
http://www.oldmaster85.com/history_of_fishing.htm



The first part


Chapter I - The Early History Of FishingFISHING, also called ANGLING, is the sport of catching fish, freshwater or saltwater, typically with rod, line, and hook. Like hunting, fishing originated as a means of providing food for survival.

Fishing as a sport, however, is of considerable antiquity. An Egyptian angling scene of about 2000 BC shows figures fishing with rod and line and with nets. A Chinese account of about the 4th century BC refers to fishing with a silk line, a hook made from a needle, and a bamboo rod, with cooked rice as bait. References to fishing are also found in ancient Greek, Assyrian, Roman, and Jewish writings.

Today, fishing, often called sport fishing to distinguish it from commercial fishing, is, despite the growth of towns and the increase of pollution in many sources, one of man's principal relaxations and is, in many countries, the most popular participant sport.

The problems of the modern angler are still those of his ancestor: where to find fish, how to approach them, and what sort of bait to use. The angler must understand wind and weather. Fishing remains what it has always been, a problem in applied natural history.

The history of angling is in large part the history of tackle, as the equipment for fishing is called. One of man's earliest tools was the predecessor of the fishhook, a gorge: a piece of wood, bone, or stone an inch or so in length, pointed at both ends and secured off-center to the line. The gorge was covered with some kind of bait. When a fish swallowed the gorge, a pull on the line wedged it across the gullet of the fish, which could then be pulled in.

With the coming of the use of metals, a hook was one of the first tools made. This was attached to a handline of animal or vegetable material, a method that is efficient only when used from a boat. The practice of attaching the line in turn to a rod, at first probably a stick or tree branch, made it possible to fish from the bank or shore and even to reach over vegetation bordering the water.

For thousands of years, the fishing rod remained short, not more than a few feet in length. The earliest reference to a longer, jointed rod is from Roman times, about the 4th century AD. At that time also, Aelian wrote of Macedonians catching trout on artificial flies and described how each fly was dressed (made). The rod they used was only 6 feet (1.8 metres) long and the line the same length, so that the method used was probably dapping, gently laying the bait on the surface of the water.

[captnemo]

2nd part

Chapter 2 - The Art Of Fishing Develops

The history of sport fishing in England began with the printing by Wynkyn de Worde of the Treatyse of Fysshynge With an Angle (1496) as a part of the second edition of The Boke of St. Albans, which had originally dealt only with hunting. The book was evidently based on earlier continental treatises dating to the 14th century. The artificial flies described in the Treatyse are surprisingly modern (six of the dozen mentioned are still in use). The rods are 18-22 feet long with a line of plaited horsehair tied to one end.

The first period of great improvement came about the mid-17th century, when Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton were writing the classic The Compleat Angler and Col. Robert Venables and Thomas Barker were describing new tackle and methods of fishing.

About this time some unknown angler attached a wire loop or ring at the tip end of the rod, which allowed a running line, useful for both casting and playing a hooked fish. Barker in 1667 mentions a salmon-fishing line of 26 yards. What was obviously needed was a means of taking up and holding such lengths, and this led to the invention of the reel.

Experiments with material for the line led to the use of a gut string (mentioned by the diarist Samuel Pepys in 1667) and of a lute string (noted by Venables in 1676). The use of a landing hook, now called a gaff, for lifting large hooked fish from the water was noted by Barker in 1667.

Improved methods of fishhook making were devised in the 1650s by Charles Kirby, who later invented the Kirby bend, a distinctive shape of hook with offset point that is still in common use worldwide. Kirby and his fellow hook makers, who were also needle makers, were dispersed from their shops near Old London Bridge by the Plague and the Great Fire of London in 1666, and they ultimately established factories in Redditch around 1730.

[captnemo]

Chapter 3

hapter 3 - The Early Reels And Rods

The first rudimentary reel had consisted of a wooden spool with a metal ring that fitted over the angler's thumb. By 1770 a rod with guides for the line along its length and a reel was in common use. The first true reel was a geared multiplying reel attached under the rod, in which one turn of the handle moved the spool through several revolutions. Never popular in Great Britain, such reels became the prototype of the bait-casting reel as devised by two Kentucky watchmakers in the early 1800s. The predominant British reel was called the Nottingham reel, based on the wooden lace bobbin devised in that ancient lacemaking town. It was a wide-drum, ungeared, very free-running reel, ideal for allowing line and bait or lure to float downstream with the current and suitable for casting lures for predatory fish in various kinds of sea fishing. It was influential on the design of fly-fishing reels.

Rods were also improved as heavy native woods were superseded by straight-grained, tough, elastic woods, such as lancewood and greenheart from South America and the West Indies, and by bamboo. By the end of the 18th century a technique had been developed in which several strips of bamboo were glued together, retaining the strength and pliancy of the cane but greatly reducing the thickness. Between 1865 and 1870 complete hexagonal rods, made by laminating six triangular strips of bamboo, were produced on both sides of the Atlantic.

From 1880 tackle design evolved rapidly. Horsehair for the fishing line was replaced by silk covered with coats of oxidized linseed oil. Such lines were easily cast and sank heavily if ungreased, or floated if greased. The average angler could cast three times farther with these lines, and such methods as dry-fly and wet-fly fishing became possible. In the Nottingham reel, ebonite (a hard rubber) or metal replaced wood, so that it became even more free-spinning. Since the reel revolved faster than the line runoff, a considerable tangle (called an overrun in Britain, a backlash in the U.S.) could result. Governors were devised to prevent this. In 1896 William Shakespeare, of Kalamazoo, Mich., devised the level-wind, which automatically spread the line evenly as it was wound on the reel. In 1880 the firm of Malloch, in Scotland, introduced the first turntable reel, which had one side of the spool open. During casting, the reel was turned 90º, bringing it in line with rod guides, so that the line slipped easily off the end of the spool. For line recovery, the spool was turned back 90º. The reel was used mainly for casting heavy lures for salmon fishing, but it influenced the reel invented by the English textile magnate Holden Illingworth, which the British called a fixed-spool reel and the Americans a spinning reel. In this kind of reel, the spool permanently faces up the rod and the line peels off in the cast as with the Malloch reel.

In the 20th century, rods became shorter and lighter without sacrificing strength. Split bamboo was largely replaced by fibre glass and finally by carbon fibre as rod material. After the 1930s the fixed-spool reel was taken up in Europe and, after World War II, in North America and the rest of the world, creating a boom in spin casting. Nylon monofilament line was developed in the late 1930s and became dominant after World War II, as did braided lines in other synthetic materials. Plastic coverings for fly lines allowed them to float or sink without greasing. Plastic also became the dominant material for artificial casting lures.