*Notice the last paragraph, which explains everything. Chapter I - The Early History Of Fishing
FISHING, 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. (*Webster's angling 1: To fish with a hook and line.) 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 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. *See, we got our flyfishing from aliens! Now it all makes sense! I thought that guy had too many arms and eyes! DonO
