page_title: Recreational fishing
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Recreational fishing / History
context_page_description: Recreational fishing, also called sport fishing, is fishing for pleasure or competition. It can be contrasted with commercial fishing, which is fishing for profit, or subsistence fishing, which is fishing for survival.
  The most common form of recreational fishing is done with a rod, reel, line, hooks and any one of a wide range of baits. Other devices, commonly referred to as terminal tackle, are also used to affect or complement the presentation of the bait to the targeted fish. Some examples of terminal tackle include weights, floats, and swivels. Lures are frequently used in place of bait. Some hobbyists make handmade tackle themselves, including plastic lures and artificial flies. The practice of catching or attempting to catch fish with a hook is known as angling.
  Big-game fishing is conducted from boats to catch large open-water species such as tuna, sharks and marlin. Noodling and trout tickling are also recreational activities.
context_section_description: The early evolution of fishing as recreation is not clear, but there is anecdotal evidence for fly fishing in Japan as early as the ninth century BCE, and in Europe Claudius Aelianus (175–235 CE) describes fly fishing in his work On the Nature of Animals.
  For the early Japanese and Macedonians, however, fly fishing was likely to have been a means of survival, rather than recreation. It is possible that antecedents of recreational fly fishing arrived in England with the Norman conquest of 1066. Although the point in history where fishing could first be said to be recreational is not clear, it is clear that recreational fishing had fully arrived with the publication of The Compleat Angler.
  The earliest English essay on recreational fishing was published in 1496, shortly after the invention of the printing press. The authorship of this was attributed to Dame Juliana Berners, the prioress of the Benedictine Sopwell Nunnery. The essay was titled Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an Angle, and was published in the second Boke of Saint Albans, a treatise on hawking, hunting, and heraldry. These were major interests of the nobility, and the publisher, Wynkyn de Worde, was concerned that the book should be kept from those who were not gentlemen, since their immoderation in angling might "utterly destroy it".
  During the 16th century the work was much read, and was reprinted many times. Treatyse includes detailed information on fishing waters, the construction of rods and lines, and the use of natural baits and artificial flies. It also includes modern concerns about conservation and angler etiquette.
  The earliest English poetical treatise on Angling by John Dennys, said to have been a fishing companion of Shakespeare, was published in 1613, The Secrets of Angling. Footnotes of the work, written by Dennys' editor, William Lawson, make the first mention of the phrase to 'cast a fly': "The trout gives the most gentlemanly and readiest sport of all, if you fish with an artificial fly, a line twice your rod's length of three hairs' thickness... and if you have learnt the cast of the fly."
  In a US context, The Outdoor Industry Association, states that fishing participation has continued its 11-year upward trajectory, adding 300,000 participants and reaching its highest number of participants since 2007. At the same time,the participation rate dipped slightly by 0.1%, bringing the fishing rate to 16.4%. This was due to the increasing population of the United States.
  The "Leaky Bucket" illustrates the annual churn of fishing participants, or those people joining/ rejoining the activity and those quitting in a given year. From 2017 to 2018, there was significant churn in fishing participation. While 9.1 million people stopped fishing, 9.4 million started. All of this change led to a fairly high churn rate of 18.5%, but also resulted in a net gain of 300,000 fishing participants.
  In 2018 participants spent a collective 883 million days fishing, averaging 17.9 annual fishing days per person. These average outing were done by an average of 2.1% over the past 3 years.
caption: Sketch of Juliana Berners, author of the earliest essay on recreational fishing.
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