Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

smomus—AD mosellam 195rate, no opsophagist or other author notices the fish. Theirsilence is natural ; the high temperature of the water forbidsits frequenting the Mediterranean or its inflowing rivers. ^The length of the whole poem (483 lines) prevents entirequotation, although the touch and movement all through displa}'fully the instinct and feeHng for sport.Pictures of the scenery along the banks of the Moselle arefollowed by the enumeration and characterisation of the fishin its waters rendered after the manner of the didactic epic.The poem furnishes a lively description of the fishermen ofthe Moselle, made from actual observation. Men in boatsdrag nets in mid-stream ; men watch the corks of little nets inshallower water ; men perched on banks or on rocks armedwith rods scan the floats bobbing on the water, or jerk in theprey. But we search for fly-fishing in vain." And now, where the bank gives easy access, a host of\spoilers are searching all the waters. 2 Alas ! poor fish, illsheltered by thine inmost stream ! One of them trails hiswet fines far out in mid-river, and sweeps off the shoals caughtin his knotty seine ;where the stream gUdes with placid course,another spreads his drag-nets buoyed on their cork-floats." A third, leaning over the waters beneath the rock, lowersthe arching top of his supple rod, as he casts the hooks sheathedin deadly baits. The unwary rovers of the deep rush on themwith gaping mouth—too late, their wide jaws feel throughand through the stings of the hidden barb—they writhe—thesurface tells the tale, and the rod ducks to the jerky twitchof the quivering horse-hair. Enough—with one whizzingstroke the boy snatches his prey slant-wise from the water ;* Salmon appear but infrequently in representations, but Plate 8 inC. W. King's Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, Gloucestershire, London,1879, shows in colours a mosaic dedicated to the god Nodons by FlavinsSenilis, an officer in command of the fleet stationed off the Severn : thismosaic includes a number of salmon. King, ib. Plate 13, 2, is a diadem of beatenbronze representing a fisherman with a pointed cap in the act of hookingwith undoubtedly a tight hne a fine salmon : cf. A. B. Cook's discussion ofthese finds in Folk-Lore, 1906, XVI. 37 ff. Nodons was in fact, like Nuada, afish god, indeed a Celtic understudy for Neptune. If salmon figure little inrepresentations, they bulk large in laws, and in commissariats for campaigns,e.g. 3000 dried salmon were ordered by Edw. II. in his war with Bruce.^ From Professor R. C. Jebbs' Translation, p. 176 (line 240 ff.).