Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

8 INTRODUCTIONProgress from the Egyptian method, which made fast the Kneto the top of the rod,i to a " running hne " took, so far asdiscoverable records show, no less a period than that betweenc. 2000 B.C. and our sixteenth or seventeenth century, i.e. some3600, or (according to Petrie) over 5000, years !The Reel, which, however rude, would appear a much morecomplicated device than other conceivable methods of a runningline, seems yet to be mentioned first. The earliest descriptionoccurs in The Art of Angling, by T. Barker, 1651, the firstpropagator of the heresy of the salmon roe, and according toDr. Turrell " the father of poachers." The earhest picturefigures in his enlarged edition of 1657. The Reel affords anotherinstance of slow growth. Its employment except with salmonor big pike only coincides with the beginning of the nineteenthcentury.The development to the more subtle method of play bymeans of spare line can only be conjectured.It was obviously invented somewhere between 1496 {TheBoke of St. Albans, where we are expressly told to " dubbe thelyne and frette it fast in y toppe with a bowe to fasten on yourlyne ") and 1651, when Barker mentions the " wind " (whichwas set in a hole two feet or so from the bottom of the rod) asa device employed by a namesake of his own, and presumablyby few beside at that time.Walton four years later, but anticipating Barker by twoas to its employment in salmon fishing, writes of the " wheele "about the middle of the rod or nearer the hand as evidentlyan uncommon device, " which is to be observedbetter by seeing one of them than by a large demonstrationof words."Focussing a perplexed eye on the picture vouchsafed byBarker in his enlarged edition of 1657, we are impressed by thewisdom of Father Izaak. Frankly it is not easy to discernfrom it what Barker's " wind " was intended to be or what themethod of working.Apparently he had in mind two distinctimplements, a " wheele " similar to Walton's (such perhaps as^ Oric Bates, Ancient Egyptian Fishing, Harvard African Studies, I., 1917,p. 248. With a " running line," Leintz in U.S.A. cast April, 192 1, 437 ft. 7 in.