HISTORICAL

FISHING IN GENERAL AND FLY FISHING IN PARTICULAR

THE Beginning. The beginning of the ancient and honorable art of taking fishes with an angle is lost in the dim, misty reaches of the past before men made a pictured or written record of events. Nearly all ancient peoples, however, had their quaint and curious fables on the origin of angling and many of these legends tell us that the art was handed down to men from the Gods which is, indeed, a reasonable supposition.

The earliest authentic mention of angling we find in the Book of Job, written about 1500 B.C. The Lord asks him.: " Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook?" Fish hooks are also mentioned by Amos (IV, 2) written 787 B.C., and the prophecies of Isaiah (XIX, 8), written 760 B.C., sound a warning to unrighteous fishermen: "The fishers shall mourn and all they that cast angles into the brooks shall lament and they that spread nets on the waters