STL All Sports

To the average person angling and fishing are synonymous. However, though the sports are related, there is a difference. Fishing is catching fish without regard to method. Angling requires special tactics. The angler rates classification as an artist for his handling of the frail rod, the casting of his line and the special technique in the operation of his reel, whereas the ordinary fisherman is concerned only in acquiring something, and a lot of it, for the frying pan.

The scientific angler is one who can make a cast from any designated spot, and hit a designated spot 125 to 350 or 375 feet away, depending upon the weight of his lead sinker. Furthermore, the high class angler uses nothing but artificial bait, whereas the fisherman calls on anything that will lure fish to strike.

Beyond all that, the angler can find a great deal of sport in merely making casts in competition, whereas the fisherman gains joy only through catching fish. In fact, in the earliest days of angling contests, the outstanding casters were just as likely to use an elaborate lawn or a barren field to determine championships, as to seek water, while the fisherman had to have water to achieve his ends.

No historian knows the identity of the first fisherman. But it is established that fish first were caught with bare hands, and that Persia was the pioneer nation to add fish to the national diet.

In the dim ages, floods swept many lands, as they sometimes do now. When the waters receded, fish were left stranded on beaches or in holes. The "fishermen" needed merely to make a snatch to gain a fish, but "fishing" in that age before fish were known to be food was only "for the fun of it."

The next method was "tickling"-a rare sport, indeed. "Tickling" involved leaning over a pool in a stream, where fish swam lazily. The "fisherman" slipped his hand under the belly of the fish and proceeded to tickle it. While the fish was enjoying such attention, the sly human carefully would open his fingers, spread them around the fish, make a sudden grab and the fish and the water parted company. Acquiring fish by "tickling" still is done in many countries. In the Rocky Mountain region of the United States it is quite popular, especially during droughts. When the streams are almost dry and the only water of consequence is in the pools, trout loiter there in sluggish condition. They won't dart away at the intrusion of a hand-because there is nowhere to dart. Thus the trout fall easy victims to the "ticklers."

The third form of fishing brought the spear into action. That was long before the Christian Era. Inasmuch as harpooning fish involved possible loss of the spear by poor marksmen, it would seem that the spearing wasn't for the sport of the thing; that men caught fish for use as food. Spears were treasured; their loss was not to be risked in "fishing." Therefore, the spearmen may be regarded as the first to know that fish was food for humans.

The next method was a crude form of modern line fishing, originated by the Egyptians. They used a stout vine to which a burr was attached. The burr was swished around in the waters to attract the fish, the fish struck and swallowed the aw burr. The smaller fish then were hauled in; the larger ones, which might disgorge the burr or break the vine, were pulled in as close to shore as possible, and then dispatched with a sharp blow of a club.

The resourceful Egyptians, realizing the weakness of the vine in struggles with large fish, devised a fishing line made of animal hair, which they braided. They manufactured lines of unlimited length and attached them to thornwood branches, which enabled them to cast well out from shore. The new lines held the fish, but the burrs did not function satisfactorily with big fish, which disgorged them. Therefore, the Egyptians invented crude hooks-made of bone-with one end sharpened, and, as time went on, people of other nations substituted ivory for bone, then bronze hooks, iron hooks and steel hooks.

The reverse barb on fishhooks, to prevent the fish from slipping off, is of modern creation.