• Hook fishing, or angling, is a popular sport."Silver evening" is Copyrighted by Flickr user: lepiaf.geo (Gordana Adamovic-Mladenovic) under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
  
  

Origins of Fishing

• Scientists believe that humans who lived near large waterways learned to catch fish nearly as early as they learned to hunt. Because fish move so swiftly through water, ancient fishers were constantly trying to find better ways to catch fish. Some began to use baited vines attached to sticks---the first fishing poles. Because fish could easily swim away with the bait, the fishers needed something to secure the fish to the line. They first experimented with gorges, or small pieces of wood, bone, or stone sharpened at both ends and covered in bait materials. When the fish swallowed the bait, the gorge internally impaled it, allowing the fisher to pull it in.
  
  

Earliest Hooks

• No one is certain when early humans began to experiment with hooks. Archeologists estimate the oldest gorge ever found to be about 9,000 years old. At some point fishers began changing the design of gorges to create the curved "J" shaped hook commonly used today. Scientists in Norway have discovered a cache of such hooks made from bone, estimated to be between 7,000 and 8,000 years old.
  
  

Metal Hooks

• As early humans began to experiment with metals, they also began to make fishing hooks out of metal instead of bone or stone. Wood was never a widely used hook material because of its light weight and tendency to break easily.
  
  

Styles of Hooks

• Skilled metal artisans crafted fishing hooks by hand. Artifacts reveal that they experimented with many different shapes, including twists and inverted "U" shapes. Most settled on the "J" shape observed in the Norwegian cache. By 2000 B.C. ancient Egyptians were fishing with hooks that included a barb on the end. The barbed "J" remained the standard in hook fishing tackle.
  
  

Progression of Hook Fishing

• While commercial fishers continued to use nets and other inventions to gather large numbers of fish, lone fishers preferred the hook. The Industrial Revolution ushered in the era of mass-produced fishing hooks, standardizing sizes and styles. The first fish hook manufacturing plant opened in England in 1826, but Scandinavians became the leading producers of fishing hooks.
  
  

Hook Fishing Today

• Despite the myriad ways of obtaining fish in modern society, hook fishing remains a popular individual pastime. For some, it is even a profitable professional sport. Hook fishers endlessly debate the best bait, methods and styles of gear. Ultimately, however, the experience of hook fishing has changed little since ancient times. It remains a lone struggle between fisher and prey.