Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

FISHING—LAKE COMO 143a fishing syndicate than the country gentleman living on hisplace or river,Pliny the Younger possesses, in addition to his appreciationof the various joys of country life, a passionate yet exquisitefeeling for beauty of scenery, especially for that round LakeComo, to which his letters recur again and again.Icannot, however, conceive him much of a hunter, despitethe abundant game which the Apennine or Laurentine covertsharboured, or much of a piscator, despite his notices of fishingon his favourite lake.A letter [Epist., L 6) to Tacitus, who hadapparently been chaffing him as a sportsman, frankly admitsthat although he has killed three boars his chief pleasure inthe chase consists of sitting quietly beside the nets, to whichthe game was driven, wrapt in contemplation or jotting downon his tablets the ideas which the solitude and silence demandedby the sport were wont to produce.As a fisherman he took his pleasure, if not sadly, for the mostpart vicariously. He joyed more, if I read him aright, inwatching from one or other of his villas the boatmen toilingwith their nets and lines than in a day's fishing, an impressionwhich seems confirmed by his appreciation of the joy of beingable to angle from bed !Thus we read in Epist., IX. :7 "On the shores of ComoI have several villas, but two occupy me most . That one. .feels no wave ; this one breaks them. From that, you maylook down upon the fishermen below ; while from this, youmay yourself fish, and lower your hook from your bedroomalmost from your very bed — just as from a little boat." ^If the site of the present Villa PHniana is that of the ancientVilla, as from Pliny's description 2 of the close proximity ofthe spring (which even now preserves the unusual characteristicsspecified in his letter) we may safely conclude, the featof throwing your hook from your bedroom is obviously of theeasiest.1 Cf. Martial, Epist., X. 30, 17," Nee saeta longo quaerit in mari prsedamSed e cubili lectuloque iactatamSpectatus alte lineam trahit piscis."2 Epht., V. 7.