Angling Done Here! A Strictly Veracious History

A Short History of Fishing

Fishing, in its broadest sense – is the activity of catching fish. It is an ancient practice dating back at least 40,000 years. Since the sixteenth century fishing vessels have been able to cross oceans in pursuit of fish and since the nineteenth century it has been possible to use larger vessels and in some cases process the fish on board. Techniques for catching fish include varied methods such as hand gathering, spearing, netting, angling and trapping.

Isotopic analysis of the skeletal remains of Tianyuan man, a 40,000 year old modern human from eastern Asia, has shown that he regularly consumed freshwater fish. As well as this, archaeological features such as shell middens, discarded fish-bones and cave paintings show that sea foods were important for early man’s survival and were consumed in significant quantities. The first civilisation to practice organised fishing was the Egyptians however, as the River Nile was so full of fish. The Egyptians invented various implements and methods for fishing and these are clearly illustrated in tomb scenes, drawings and papyrus documents. Simple reed boats served for fishing. Woven nets, weir baskets made from willow branches, harpoons and hook and line (the hooks having a length of between eight millimetres and eighteen centimetres) were all being used. By the twelfth dynasty, metal hooks with barbs were also utilised.

Despite the Egyptian’s strong history of fishing, later Greek cultures rarely depicted the trade, due to its perceived low social status. There is a wine cup however, dating from c.500 BC, that shows a boy crouched on a rock with a fishing-rod in his right hand and a basket in his left. In the water below there is a rounded object of the same material with an opening on the top. This has been identified as a fish-cage used for keeping live fish, or as a fish-trap. One of the other major Grecian sources on fishing is Oppian of Corycus, who wrote a major treatise on sea fishing, the Halieulica or Halieutika, composed between 177 and 180. This is the earliest such work to have survived intact to the modern day. Oppian describes various means of fishing including the use of nets cast from boats, scoop nets held open by a hoop, spears and tridents, and various traps ‘which work while their masters sleep.’ Oppian's description of fishing with a ‘motionless’ net is also very interesting:

The fishers set up very light nets of buoyant flax and wheel in a circle round about while they violently strike the surface of the sea with their oars and make a din with sweeping blow of poles. At the flashing of the swift oars and the noise the fish bound in terror and rush into the bosom of the net which stands at rest, thinking it to be a shelter: foolish fishes which, frightened by a noise, enter the gates of doom. Then the fishers on either side hasten with the ropes to draw the net ashore . . .

The earliest English essay on recreational fishing was published in 1496, shortly after the invention of the printing press! Unusually for the time, its author was a woman; Dame Juliana Berners, the prioress of the Benedictine Sopwell Nunnery (Hertforshire). The essay was titled Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle and was published in a larger book, forming part of a treatise on hawking, hunting and heraldry. These were major interests of the nobility, and the publisher, Wynkyn der Worde was concerned that the book should be kept from those who were not gentlemen, since their immoderation in angling might ‘utterly destroye it.’ The roots of recreational fishing itself go much further back however, and the earliest evidence of the fishing reel comes from a fourth century AD work entitled Lives of Famous Mortals.

Many credit the first recorded use of an artificial fly (fly fishing) to an even earlier source - to the Roman Claudius Aelianus near the end of the second century. He described the practice of Macedonian anglers on the Astraeus River, ‘. . . they have planned a snare for the fish, and get the better of them by their fisherman's craft. . . . They fasten red wool round a hook, and fit on to the wool two feathers which grow under a cock's watdes, and which in colour are like wax.’ Recreational fishing for sport or leisure only really took off during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries though, and coincides with the publication of Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler in 1653. This is seen as the definitive work that champions the position of the angler who loves fishing for the sake of fishing itself. More than 300 editions have since been published, demonstrating its unstoppable popularity.

Big-game fishing only started as a sport after the invention of the motorised boat. In 1898, Dr. Charles Frederick Holder, a marine biologist and early conservationist, virtually invented this sport and went on to publish many articles and books on the subject. His works were especially noted for their combination of accurate scientific detail with exciting narratives. Big-game fishing is also a recreational pastime, though requires a largely purpose built boat for the hunting of large fish such as the billfish (swordfish, marlin and sailfish), larger tunas (bluefin, yellowfin and bigeye), and sharks (mako, great white, tiger and hammerhead). Such developments have only really gained prominence in the twentieth century. The motorised boat has also meant that commercial fishing, as well as fish farming has emerged on a massive scale. Large trawling ships are common and one of the strongest markets in the world is the cod trade which fishes roughly 23,000 tons from the Northwest Atlantic, 475,000 tons from the Northeast Atlantic and 260,000 tons from the Pacific.

These truly staggering amounts show just how much fishing has changed; from its early hunter-gatherer beginnings, to a small and specialised trade in Egyptian and Grecian societies, to a gentleman’s pastime in fifteenth century England right up to the present day. We hope that the reader enjoys this book, and is inspired by fishing’s long and intriguing past to find out more about this truly fascinating subject. Enjoy.

ANGLING DONE HERE!

RIGGING UP THE TACKLE.

OCCASIONALLY my town friends assure me that it must be a deadly dull business living in the country all the year round, as I do. Nothing is farther from the truth. For a healthy man the country is ever full of active, interesting, even exciting, pursuits, little dreamed of by the dawdlers in the city’s artificial life. Take a sheep and a field, for example—quiet, inoffensive, unexciting objects. But try to catch that sheep in that field without the assistance of a dog! The amount of sport such an occupation is capable of affording is known only to the lucky few who have tried it.

Maybe you have never tried to catch an active, fleet-footed bit of mutton in a three-acre meadow. To any gentleman over seventeen stones and still expanding, I can recommend no exercise better calculated, if indulged in temperately—sav three times a day after meals,—to keep in check a tendency to superfluous adipose tissue. It is now just a week once I indulged in the pastime myself, and I’m sweating yet. Let us suppose that, having a little meadow land at your disposal, and your wife being somewhat partial to mutton cutlets, you cherish a handful of sheep therein. You have then a pleasant little hobby to occupy your spare time, you can go and cut off a mutton cutlet or two whenever you have a fancy that way, and you are sure then that they are fresh laid. One fine morning, say as you are smoking your after-breakfast pipe in the garden, you fancy one of the sheep in the meadow is a trifle lame in the off fore-leg—probably wants its toe-nails paring—and you resolve to at once investigate the matter. You happen to be out of dogs at the moment, and, though the whole hillside swarms with sheep-curs at the rate of one to every ten square yards or so, when you come to try to borrow one you find that they all chance to be away for the day. As a matter of fact you find that there isn’t a single sheep-dog within six miles of you. But that is a mere trifle. You can easily catch that sheep without one. You enter the arena with a confident air. The victory is already yours—or it soon will be, which is the same thing. The sheep in the middle of the field turn to gaze at you with an inquiring look, wondering which of them it is you want. You approach cautiously. The lame one is in the centre of the group. You will separate it from the others, and drive it to the top of the field. You feel in your pocket to make sure the clasp-knife is there with which to pare down the hoof. The knife is there, but the next instant the sheep isn’t, for the whole gang are off like the wind to the far end of the meadow. You smile an amused smile. You rather expected this; and you start off leisurely after them. By the time you have strolled about after them for three hours, you begin to realise that it is a serious job you have undertaken, and you see how much more practicable it will be to drive them all up into the corner where the hurdles meet the garden fence, and select the one you want when you get them penned. That would have worked all right if you had not overlooked the trifling fact that you can’t pen them. You drive them along the hurdles towards the corner. There is only one small spot on the face of this earth where those sheep have the slightest objection to go, and that is the corner where you want them. They stream out in a tempestuous torrent down by the garden rails. You run after them, head them back, and cautiously drive them up alongside the rails—and they gallop off along the hurdles. At last, after ten unsuccessful attempts, you get them ranged up against the hurdles within a dozen yards of the desired corner. You approach as if you were walking on broken glass. You arrive within ten yards of them. You extend your arms and give vent to a gentle Sh-h-hoo! to encourage them to move along. They do move along, but it is in the wrong direction. In a trice you have caught the excitement. You run along with them. They fly. You fly. The ground shoots under your feet. The hundred yards in ten seconds is merely standing still in comparison. The sky turns black; the rush of air brings a mist before your eyes and blots out that cataract of rushing wool. You pause for breath and turn round. The sheep have turned round before you, and you discover them quietly grazing a hundred and fifty yards away, as if nothing whatever had happened to disturb the serenity of the gladsome morn, or make the earth wobble on its axis. If you are a profane man you probably get your shirt out there and then in the field; if not, you go into the house and take it off and wring it over the sink, or put a dry one on. This gives you time for calm reflection, and you see clearly that the only way to catch that sheep is to single it out, keep it in your eye, and chase it determinedly, never giving it a chance to recover its breath, until you exhaust it, and it lies down in calm submission. You start doggedly to work out this theory; but you have made another miscalculation. In ten minutes it is you who are lying down exhausted and submissive, and that lame sheep has still enough skip left in it to make seventeen tight-rope dancers, a pantomime ballet, and a marionette show. Then you go into the house again to get another dry shirt.

By this time you have arrived at the conclusion that it would be cruelly selfish not to afford your fellow-creatures the opportunity to share in your pleasures, so you drag your wife and the hired help out into the field, and post them where you think they will do most good and have a good view of the sport. Then you resume your tactics for driving the sheep into the corner, and when you get them up by the garden rails they all want to go through the gate into the garden, and seem as if they had made up their minds that they wouldn’t be happy till they got there. They don’t get there all the same—at least not just then—for just as they are exhibiting a late show of recognising what is expected of them, the hired help oversteps the bounds of caution, and one of the sheep oversteps your wife, as she is vainly attempting to arrest their stampede with a toasting-fork, and knocks her down. This is distinctly discouraging, and leads you to say harsh things to her whom you swore at the altar to love and cherish. I don’t blame you. There ought to be a saving clause inserted in the Prayer Book immediately after the love and cherish item to the effect that This shall not apply to any time when a man is trying to catch a sheep without a dog. A George Washington and William Cobbett rolled into one wouldn’t have time to love and cherish even an angel in woman’s clothing at the same time that they were trying to catch a sheep. Beyond attending to the business in hand, the most expansive human organization hasn’t the capacity at that precise moment to do anything else—except to sweat and swear. When your wife has picked herself up and straightened the toasting-fork out, she meekly asks if it wouldn’t be as well, seeing that all the sheep were so desirous of getting into the garden, to open the gate and let them in. Then the gate could be closed again, and the area at their disposal being comparatively limited, the one you wanted might easily be caught. You grasp at the suggestion with the desperation of a drowning man clutching at the needle in a bottle of hay. You act upon it. You open the gate, marshal your forces, and anticipate no difficulty in getting the sheep at once into the garden. That is because you don’t understand sheep. You drive them up to the spot. They group round that open gateway with their backs towards it, and pretend there isn’t a garden and there isn’t a gateway into it, until you urge them strenuously and they all skedaddle, with you and your wife and Mary Ann all skedaddling after them. Six or seven unsuccessful attempts you make to drive them into the garden, and after you have thrown