Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

358 FISHING METHODSWhile there may be doubt whether we possess any Assyrianword signifying hooks, there can be none as to their existenceand their employment.From the absence of any, even conjectural, word for orrepresentation of a float, we can only infer that ground baitfishing was the chief, perhaps the sole, line method in vogue.I can find no evidence that the Assyrians availed themselvesof the spear, the trident, drugs or poison, but as the first twofigure in Egyptian, Jewish, and Roman records, and appearto be the common property of all early peoples, the probabilityis that they were known and used in the Two Rivers.The fish of these resembled the fish of the Nile in theiralleged refusal to rise to a fly, but our soldiers have caught onthe fly hundreds of " salmon " of good weight up to 112 lbs.One (hand-lined) scaled 170 lbs., and one (speared) ran up to215 lbs. This " salmon " is a kind of mahseer, the noblest ofthe carp family, ^ or, according to Mr. Tate Regan, a barbel,probably the species Barbus esocinus described by Heckel ascoming from the Tigris. 2The second method was by Netting, which to judge fromits repeated occurrence either as a pursuit or in metaphorwas universal, and prevailed far more extensively than linefishing, especially in Sumeria. The only Sumerian word,according to Dr. Langdon, for fishing, ha-dih (one of the oldestwords in the world for the act or occupation), signifies or isakin to a word signifying " to surround," i.e. with a net, asdoes the Babylonian term hdru. If this be the case. Nettingprobably constituted their universal, possibly their only fishing.In the eastern division of Assyria proper lie the maintributaries of the Tigris, such as the Zab and the Diyala,rising among the Kurdish mountains. As Netting was naturallymore restricted in this area than in the Persian Gulf, linefishing possibly obtained more widely here than in the South.At any rate it is from the Sumerian excavations that wederive a well-known example of metaphorical Net fishing.^ See The Fishing Gazette, January 6, 191 7.2 See The Field, March 15, 1919. The fish is said to attain a weight ofover 300 lbs.