Fishing, the sport of catching fish, freshwater or saltwater, typically with rod, line, and hook. Like hunting, fishing originated as a means of providing food for survival. Fishing as a sport, however, is of considerable antiquity. An Egyptian angling scene from about 2000 BCE shows figures fishing with rod and line and with nets. A Chinese account from about the 4th century BCE refers to fishing with a silk line, a hook made from a needle, and a bamboo rod, with cooked rice as bait. References to fishing are also found in ancient Greek, Assyrian, Roman, and Jewish writings.

Today, despite increased human populations creating a great number of demands on rivers and lakes, fishing for sport remains one of the most popular forms of outdoor recreation in the world. The problems of the modern angler fundamentally remain the same as those of every angler who came before: where to find fish and how to best tempt them into being taken. The angler must understand wind and weather, the nature of the quarry, and the ways of the water. Fishing remains what it has always been—a problem in applied natural history.

The history of angling is in large part the history of tackle, as the equipment for fishing is called.

One of humankind’s earliest tools was the predecessor of the fishhook: a gorge—that is, a piece of wood, bone, or stone 1 inch (2.5 cm) or so in length, pointed at both ends and secured off-centre to the line. The gorge was covered with some kind of bait. When a fish swallowed the gorge, a pull on the line wedged it across the gullet of the fish, which could then be pulled in.

With the advent of the use of copper and bronze, a hook was one of the first tools made from metal. This was attached to a hand-operated line made of animal or vegetable material of sufficient strength to hold and land a fish. The practice of attaching the other end of the line to a rod, at first probably a stick or tree branch, made it possible to fish from the bank or shore and even to reach over vegetation bordering the water.

For over a thousand years, the fishing rod remained short, not more than a few feet (a metre or so) in length. The earliest references to a longer, jointed rod are from Roman times, about the 4th century CE. As with the earliest rods made from streamside branches, the first longer rods were made of wood, which would continue as the dominant rod material well into the 19th century.

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