SCIENCE OF FISHING. 



CHAPTER I. 



Remarks on The "Gentle Art." 



HE catching of fish with a hook and line is 

 a pastime or occupation, as you like, 

 dating back into prehistoric times. We 

 read of this in the Bible and are told 

 that the ancient Greeks and Romans even 

 practiced fly fishing. 



Of course the methods of the early fisher- 

 men were crude compared to those practiced 

 at the present day, even though they did fish 

 with the artificial fly, for the beautiful rods, reels, line? and 

 other paraphernalia of the present day angler were unknown 

 then. There is no doubt whatever that the first fishing done 

 by mankind was not for sport, but to procure the where- 

 withal to satisfy the cravings of the inner man. Doubtless 

 our remote, savage ancestors picked up fish that were cast 

 up on the beach and as everything in the line of flesh was 

 food, they soon learned that fish were good to eat. Then 

 they devised means of capturing the finny denizens of the 

 deep, perhaps using crude nets of bark, strips of hide, and 

 like materials, perhaps also making pound nets or traps 

 of rushes ; and when they learned that fish would bite at 

 dainty morsels thrown into the water, they doubtless re- 

 sorted to hair lines and bone hooks. Liner of horsehair were 

 the only kind in use in ancient times, and even down to the 

 days of "Sir" Izaak Walton, in the first half of the sev- 



15 



