Jiang Ziya
Jiang Ziya, the great general and strategist and military mastermind who was key to establishing the Zhou Dynasty, was said to have spent years in his old age fishing, but with a straight hook, or no bait, or with his hook dangling above the water: but, he was fishing for a Lord, not a fish. After Jiang Ziya became the general, he was known as "Taigong" or "the Grand Duke". The degree to which this qualifies as a myth is open to question, but it is certainly a well-known motif.