ANGLING: PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE. 



By Dr. James Alexander Henshall. 



The Art of angling is as old as civilization, and has been 

 handed down to us through the fog and dust of remote ages. 

 The fish hook is mentioned in Holy Writ by the prophets Job 

 and Amos, which fact, as Father Isaak Walton observes, "must 

 imply anglers in those times." The art of angling and its 

 practice, with the tackle then used, has been vouchsafed to us 

 by authors who lived four or five centuries ago. 



The first book on the art of angling was written by a 

 woman, Dame Juliana Berners, a lady of noble birth, the 

 Prioress of Sopwell Nunnery, near St. Albans, England. Her 

 book was entitled a Treaty se of Fisshynge With an Angle, and 

 was published at London, England, in 1496. In this volume, 

 or "plaunflet", as she called it, she gives explicit directions 

 for making rods, lines, hooks, floats and sinkers, illustrated 

 by rude wood cuts. She also gives the formulas for the dress- 

 ing of twelve artificial flies, most of which with slight modifi- 

 cations are in use to-day. 



Dame Juliana gave precedence to the sport of angling over 

 the then popular sports of hunting, fowling and hawking. 

 Her advice to anglers is just as applicable to anglers of the 

 present day. The angler is counseled to take but few fish at 

 any one time ; not to fish in private ponds or preserved waters 

 without permission, nor to trespass on private property, or to 

 break dov^ni hedges, or to leave gates open. Also to protect 

 fish from their enemies; and, in modern diction and spelling, 

 concludes thus — "And all those that do after this rule shall 

 have the blessing of God and St. Peter, which he them grant 

 that with his precious blood us bought." 



Angling, she assures us is conductive to long life and happi- 

 ness, and believes that it is not all of fishing to fish, for she 

 says "if the angler catch fish no man is merrier than he," but 

 if he catch no fish and is "wet-shod to the tayl," yet at the 

 least he hath his wholesome walk, and merry at his ease; a 

 sweet air of the sweet flowers of the mead maketh him hungry ; 

 he heareth the melodious harmony of the birds." 



The next book on angling, in chronological sequence, was 

 The Book of Fishing, by Leonard Mascall, published in London, 

 in 1600. A half century later The Art of Angling, by Thomas 

 Barker, was published at London, in 1651. Barker's direc- 

 tions for fly-fishing were afterward adopted by Isaak Walton 

 in his great angling classic. The Compleat Angler, or the "Con- 



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