The Waterbury Democrat., 1945-08-21

Angling represents mans earliest auest of wild things-even antedateS hunting-when, even as now, he had to eat to live. Early in the earth's history water covered most of the globes surface.
 These waters were alive with creeping, crawling, swimming things and to them man turned for his first food supply. His weapons were rough. a crude spear and sharpened flint head made this first harpoon. It was hard for man to get close to his quarry with these clumsy weapons so about the time of the Stone Age man got smart" and began making his first fishing hooks.
 The first hook or angle was not hook at all but a gorge, made of stone, wood or bone with a groove in the center. Around this groove a thong was wound and the gorge was impaled in the bait. It was swallowed or lodged in the throat of the fish and the Stone Age fish ermen yanked his fish onto the land.
 Fishing Is often mentioned in the Bible but they were commercial men: fishing was done for food in those days and not for pleasure.
 First sports fishermen apparently were the Egyptians. In some 0i their hieroglphics and permanent carvings we find substantial citi- xens of their day pretty much ca- parisoned for fishing as the modern sports angler is with rod and line. No reels show up in the heirogly- phics.
 The Greek must have had word for it, because many of their early historians-notably Plutarch-wrote about fishing. Old Plute did an item on fishing match between Antony and Cleopatra, but he doesn't say who was doing the fishing and for what. Anyway Bill Shakespeare utilized this con- test in this great (they were all great, weren't they?) play, Anthony and Cleopatra"
 Izaak Walton (this is his birth month, by the way; he was born Aug. Q, 1893, at Stafford, England) was not Che father of angling as is generally supposed. The first com. pIete treatise on fishing Is . Greeh poem of five books.
 Fly fishing was practiced thou sands of years ago according to book written by 8 Greek in the third century A. D., which tells of the Macedonians taking fish in their rivers.
 These Macedonians, according to the early Greek writer, captured a spotted fish by using . lure made Of wool and feathers. The spotted fish undoubtedly was a brown trout and the wool and feathers consti- tuted what we'd call today stream CT fly.
 old Ike Walton was undoubtedly the father of modern angling. In his immortal work ''The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Mans Recreation" he gives advice to his contemporaries which is as applic- able today as it was in the early 1600's.
 His hints on fishing for trout can be well followed by modern fish, ermen, and he gives a recipe for 2 bait for carp which you'd think came from modern angler. You guessed it, . doughball!
 Fish are not found all over the ocean as many people imagine. MOst- Jy they aren't found far off the continental shelf of each continent as 1t goes out from a mile to u or farther before sloping off into great dephths of 1000 feet or more
 Of the salt water species the life cycle of the eel and the salmon are most interesting. Some scien- tists contend that all cells on the western Hemisphere journey east ward to and through the Atlantic to a nebulous spot in the sea oi Sargasso, to spawn. The spawn Household
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