Post by olhillbilly on Jul 24, 2009 1:59:13 GMT -6
Note: Been cleaned up a tad bit so you can read it to yer young fishin folks an not havta explain much. If ya want the unabridged version, let me know and I'll send it to ya. hb
History of Fishing
Humans have been fishing for food as long as there have been humans. The first
fisherman of record, according to my uncle Billy Joe, was a long haired hippy
caveman called Ug. Ole Ug and his son, Ug li, were sitting by a stream one afternoon
gnawing the meet off of a chicken. When they got most of the half roasted flesh
off the wish bone he and Ug li made a wish and pulled the wish bone. Ug got the
long piece and while jumping around the fire in celebration his fur pants caught
on fire. He started to slap at the fire with his hands and lost the chicken bone in
the fur pants. The fur kept burning and Ug jumped in the stream and started to
wade out to the deep water in a hurry to drench the fire.
And you know what happened then. A fish hit the piece of wish bone hung up in the
fur pants. Ug caught the first fish of record on a baited hook and he did it by trolling.
It startled ole Ug to the point he immediately jumped out of the stream to the fire
where the fish fell off the hook into the flames. It smelled like food and Ug being
Ug conned Ug li into trying it first. When he saw that it didn't kill Ug li he tried it
and liked it. Ug became a skilled fisherman of his day and many of the fishing
tecniques of today are based on Ug's discoveries.
So Ug and his son Ug-li discovered accidentally that fish could not only be caught
they could be cooked and eaten and were pretty dang good. But, there was a minor
problem that they encountered while eating the fish, one that mothers all over the
earth warn their young ones about; fish have got bones.
Ug and Ug Li soon developed into avid anglers. One would sneak up on a wild chicken
and club it while the other was building a fire. After roasting the chicken they
proceeded to eat it, spitting out the feathers between their teeth, until they got to
the wish bone and then pulled it to see which would get to go fishing that day. After
a year or so of this they discovered that the wish bone could be kept and several
braided into their fur pants. Now both were fishing at the same time nearly every
day with multiple hooks and catching more fish than they could eat. Ug was a thinking
man and as all thinking men he didn't really want his wife, Ugshug, to know that he had
been wasting his days fishing. ( This is before Ug invented Golf.) He knew in order to
justify going fishing he was going to have to share the fish with Ugshug.
Ugshug was a stoneman knockout of a woman. Ug had to fight a whole tribe of her
brothers to get her, they wanted her for themselves, and he had to club her to get
her away from her mama. Ugshug not only had the looks, she also had some brains,
one of the first if not the first woman who learned to think. She was not really the
jealous type, Ug getting laid somewhere else didn't matter to her. It was the fact
that he had been gone every day for the past year and wasn't bringing home the meat
like he used to do. She was getting suspicious that all was not exactly right in stoneville.
So, you can imagine her surprise when Ug and Ug Li brought home all the fish they
could carry strung on a willow stick and threw then at her and told her to cook them.
Ugshug was pissed to say the least but her stomach got the better of her emotions
and she pitched the fish in the fire. As soon as she could smell the charred flesh she
drug them out and began to eat. As always, she pitched the bones to her daughter,
Ug Lier, to gnaw on. And here came the problem. Fish bones just ain't made to gnaw
on and sure enough first cat out of the cage and Ug lier got a fish bone hung up in
her throat. She began to swallow rapidly, gasp for air and started jumping around the
fire. Ug got pissed and slugged her on her chest and out popped the fish bone.
(Ug didn't realize it of course but he had invented a method of clearing a choking
throat that thousands of years later would be discovered again and given a fancy name.)
Now Ugshug was very protective of Ug Lier. She didn't want Ug Li nor Ug sniffing
around her and when Ug hit Ug Lier Ugshug immediately thought that Ug was trying to
get another mate. She whipped out a long narrow piece of sharp flint and took a fighting position.
UG was a caveman with a caveman's mentality. He wasn't the smartest animal in the
woods but he knew the dang flint could cut him. So, he picked up his club and knocked
it out of Ugshug's hand. As the flint fell it sliced through one of the fish, cutting off a
slab of meat without bones. Of course these primitive people didn't know this at the
time but when they later ate the slab of fish and found it didn't have bones they realized
that the flint had cut them out.
It was a hit and miss proposition for a while. Ugshug would pick up the flint and hold it
over the fish and Ug would knock heck out of her hand to make her drop the flint.
Sometimes they got a boneless piece of fish this way and sometimes they did not.
But as I said, Ugshug was a thinking woman and she finally decided that she could drop
the flint without getting her hand rapped with a club. Within a generation Ug Lier had
evolved to using the flint to just cut out the bones. Thus the invention of fish fillets
and fillet knives.
Now eating fish fillets made life a lot easier for everyone except Ug who had to
wade into the creek with the broken chicken wishbone braided into his fur pants.
During the warm months Ug found that the creek was not all that bad. In fact it
was a change from the hot air and also made him smell better. It took him a couple
of years to compute that smelling better also improved his relations with Ugshug and
he didn't have to club her to get laid near as much. But that icy winter water was
not only uncomfortable, it made his thingie shrink up. But, poor old Ug had no choice.
Ugshug was expecting another little Ug and Ug Lier could eat her weight in fish fillets.
In any case it was safer and easier than trying to club down a hairy mammoth.
It was one of those cold days in the water that Ug finally had enough. He reached
down to pull it out to take a leak and it has shrunk so bad from the cold he pissed in
his fur pants while trying to find it. Now this did warm Ug up a bit. Made him so mad
he jerked off his pants and started beating the cold water with them and dang if a
fish didn't hit on a chicken bone and jerk the pants out of Ug's hands!
Well, what was Ug to do. There he was standing on the creek bank with his thingie
shriveled from the cold, naked because a dang fish had swam off with his pants
and fish hooks, and his son Ug Li laughing his butt off at the old man. Ug did what
any rational cave man would do. He knocked heck out of Ug Li and told him to go
chase down his pants.
Ug Li might not have been bright but he had figured the cold water would make his
thingie shrink just as it had old Ug's and he was not about to go into the water. So he
picked up a long limb with a fork on the end and run along the bank until he could
snag the pants. And when he pulled in the pants he pulled in a couple of fish along with them.
It did take a while for Ug to realize he had just invented a fishing pole. For the
first couple of months he would throw his pants in the water and Ug Li would chase
the down the stream with the limb until he could snag the pants and hope there was
a fish or two on the hooks. But finally one day Ug realized that he could just tie the
pants to the limb and Ug Li could run down the side of the stream with them. This
worked pretty good until one day Ug li got tired of running and sit down with the pole
in his hand and the pants in the water. While he was resting a fish pulled the pants under
and Ug Li jerked the pole and brought in the fish. The art of still fishing had been invented.
It wasn't long after that that he accidentally discovered that a broken wish bone on
a slender vine tied to the pole worked a heck of a lot better than dragging the furs
through the water with the hooks on them. As I said, Ug wasn't the brightest bear in
the woods but his mama only raised a couple of fools and they both got ate by the bear.
One day while he was at his favorite pastime, still fishing, (well, nearly his favorite
pastime but he could only play with Ugshug for a little while. He could fish all day long)
he noticed that the fish were hitting the top of the water eating bugs. He tried to catch
a bug but they were too fast for him. But this fact stuck in his mind and he thought
about it every once in a while. One day he was trying to get a wish bone hook out of his
fur pants that was all twisted up in the fur. Finally he gave up and just cut it out with the
fillet knife that he had invented. Being in a hurry he fumbled trying to tie the knot on
the vine and dropped the hook in the water and WHAM a fish hit it and took off. It took
him a day or two of thinking about this then the flash hit him. He took a club to his son
Ug-Li and his lazy butt son-in-law Oop ( whose descendant gained considerable fame some
centuries later as Alley Oop ) and forced them to bring in the wild chickens. After cooking
and devouring the chickens he and Ugshug worked for hours around the fire wishing on the
wishbones and twisting them in Ug's fur pants. After they had them all twisted up they
cut them out with the flint fillet knife and tied them onto a short piece of vine. Sure enough
the first time he tried it a fish took off with the furry hook. Of course it also took off
with the vine, he had got to excited about the furry hook to tie it to the fishing pole. But
next time he did and that's the way Ug invented the wooly worm fly. After that it was just
a short step of a few years to invent another variety and then progress was pretty fast.
Which brings up how he invented the tackle store.
During Ug's time families were a close knit social unit with a more or less patriarch
system of government, which meant Ug was the patriarch and he governed. His word
was law except when Ugshug decided that it wasn't. (Ain't it amazing that the more
times change the more they stay the same.) Well, Ug was fishing every day and catching
more fish then they could possibly eat and the cave was getting a bit stinky from the
rotten fish. They had already discovered that the rotten fish would make their dog puke
so they left them alone. They were giving fish to Oop's family and a couple of other family
groups a few caves down. But Ug kept his fishing secrets to himself. Only his son Ug-li
knew the secret and he was too lazy to fish anyway and knew his ass was grass if he told.
Then the time came when Ug got a little tired of fishing every day. Beer hadn't been
invented yet and catching fish was getting to be somewhat boring with nothing else to
pass the time. He thought about asking one of the other heads of family to come along
but then he'd have to share the secret of fishing. As he slowed down there was just
enough fish for the family and none to share. But there was a problem in cave land,
there was some people hooked on eating fish a couple of days a week. One of the local
shaman had decided that the spirits favored this and and wouldn't even let his family
eat anything but fish on Fridays! But there was a shortage of fish because Ug had quit
fishing so much. What to do-
One Friday morning the Shaman's wife approached Ug and said, "luk er Ug gutta ab fish."
Which in Caveman's lingo meant Look here Ug, I got to have some fish. When Ug
explained that he didn't have any fish by chasing her away with a club she got an idea.
The cavemen in the Shaman's social group supported the Shaman with food, mostly meat
that they had killed. It wasn't that he couldn't hunt himself but he figured that being
the voice of the spirits they owed it to him. Whenever they come up short he would tell
them, the spirits are gonna be pissed at you,and here would come the meat. Of course this
tactic didn't work on Ug who figured he could talk to the spirits pretty good without the
shaman,s help, thanks anyway. Point is that there was plenty of fresh meat that was going
to spoil at the Shaman's cave. His wife brought some over and offer a barter with Ug who
accepted. And that's how Ug became the first commercial fisherman. Within a few days
the word got out and the cave wives were bringing meat and then furs to trade for Ug's
fish. But catching more fish meant more work and Ug preferred to give that chore to
Ugshug and the family. Fishing was fun but this was getting to be a chore.
After a year of commercial fishing Ug hit upon a plan. He had all the meat he could and
his family could eat, plenty of fish, a cave full of furs, and life was pretty sweet except
for one thing. He was tired of fishing all the dang time! Then one day one of the other
cave bosses came to him with an offer. The man offered Ug a years supply of fish and
meat if Ug would just share the secret. Took a few days but Ug decided that was the
easiest way out. So he made the trade and sat on his butt just fishing for fun for a year.
He wasn't worried about the secret getting any further because part of the deal was
that it be kept a secret. This is the first known patent leasing agreement in history. But,
after a year the agreement was no longer valid except for the keeping the secret part.
Ug was going to have to go back to work.
But there were other cavemen in Caveville who were nearly as bright as Ug. Sneaky
sorts who would slip through the brush to spy on Ug and his neighbor to watch how
and where they caught the fish. One day Ug caught one of them and used his club but
the love of fish and fishing were just to great to keep a secret forever. Within a few
months every cave man was fishing every day. Ug was back to fishing himself for
food and the party was over. Until he remembered making the wooly worm fur flies.
That was one secret that he hadn't shared.
So one day he ambled up with a wooly worm fly on a vine attached to his pole and
slapped a fisherman with a club to get his attention. He then tossed the fly in the
stream and immediately caught a fish. Now fishermen are a different sort of people.
The word got out and Ug started getting the offers for the secret and the trading
started again. Ug went into the tackle business! He soon had the whole family making
fur wooly worm flies and tying them to vines. He expanded by carrying poles and
vines in his inventory and before long started to create different fly patterns that
imitated the bugs on the water he had noticed years before. Men flocked to his cave
trading the meat and furs that their women claimed that they needed for their families
and the fight over fishing began.
Ug lived a long happy life and passed onto that great fishing hole in the sky at the
ripe age of thirty. However his family carried out the fishing tradition and became
guides, boat makers, and manufacturers of fishing tackle. Centuries later one invented
the cast net which led to a seine net. Fishing became a national pastime for millions
and Ugs descendants profited from it. In recent years his descendants became
politicians and invented the fishing license and the 10 percent excise taxes on fishing
equipment so even the government would profit on fishing. Some of his descendants
went on to be shamans and preached the tradition of "fish on Friday" which was a
boon to their commercial fishing kin who shared part of the take with the shamans.
Today we eat canned fish, fish sticks,fresh fish, visit fish markets, and fishing stores all due to old Ug inventing fishing.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he soon will
need to buy a new fishing rod and reel, hooks, line, lures, a tackle box, a boat, a motor,
a trailer for the boat, and spend a lot of money on his sweetthing to keep peace in
the family. If you run a tackle business it is best to teach his sweetthing to fish also
because she will want a better fishing rod and reel than his and more of the same
lures and her own tackle box and she will just have to have that new fishing hat and---
History of Fishing
Humans have been fishing for food as long as there have been humans. The first
fisherman of record, according to my uncle Billy Joe, was a long haired hippy
caveman called Ug. Ole Ug and his son, Ug li, were sitting by a stream one afternoon
gnawing the meet off of a chicken. When they got most of the half roasted flesh
off the wish bone he and Ug li made a wish and pulled the wish bone. Ug got the
long piece and while jumping around the fire in celebration his fur pants caught
on fire. He started to slap at the fire with his hands and lost the chicken bone in
the fur pants. The fur kept burning and Ug jumped in the stream and started to
wade out to the deep water in a hurry to drench the fire.
And you know what happened then. A fish hit the piece of wish bone hung up in the
fur pants. Ug caught the first fish of record on a baited hook and he did it by trolling.
It startled ole Ug to the point he immediately jumped out of the stream to the fire
where the fish fell off the hook into the flames. It smelled like food and Ug being
Ug conned Ug li into trying it first. When he saw that it didn't kill Ug li he tried it
and liked it. Ug became a skilled fisherman of his day and many of the fishing
tecniques of today are based on Ug's discoveries.
So Ug and his son Ug-li discovered accidentally that fish could not only be caught
they could be cooked and eaten and were pretty dang good. But, there was a minor
problem that they encountered while eating the fish, one that mothers all over the
earth warn their young ones about; fish have got bones.
Ug and Ug Li soon developed into avid anglers. One would sneak up on a wild chicken
and club it while the other was building a fire. After roasting the chicken they
proceeded to eat it, spitting out the feathers between their teeth, until they got to
the wish bone and then pulled it to see which would get to go fishing that day. After
a year or so of this they discovered that the wish bone could be kept and several
braided into their fur pants. Now both were fishing at the same time nearly every
day with multiple hooks and catching more fish than they could eat. Ug was a thinking
man and as all thinking men he didn't really want his wife, Ugshug, to know that he had
been wasting his days fishing. ( This is before Ug invented Golf.) He knew in order to
justify going fishing he was going to have to share the fish with Ugshug.
Ugshug was a stoneman knockout of a woman. Ug had to fight a whole tribe of her
brothers to get her, they wanted her for themselves, and he had to club her to get
her away from her mama. Ugshug not only had the looks, she also had some brains,
one of the first if not the first woman who learned to think. She was not really the
jealous type, Ug getting laid somewhere else didn't matter to her. It was the fact
that he had been gone every day for the past year and wasn't bringing home the meat
like he used to do. She was getting suspicious that all was not exactly right in stoneville.
So, you can imagine her surprise when Ug and Ug Li brought home all the fish they
could carry strung on a willow stick and threw then at her and told her to cook them.
Ugshug was pissed to say the least but her stomach got the better of her emotions
and she pitched the fish in the fire. As soon as she could smell the charred flesh she
drug them out and began to eat. As always, she pitched the bones to her daughter,
Ug Lier, to gnaw on. And here came the problem. Fish bones just ain't made to gnaw
on and sure enough first cat out of the cage and Ug lier got a fish bone hung up in
her throat. She began to swallow rapidly, gasp for air and started jumping around the
fire. Ug got pissed and slugged her on her chest and out popped the fish bone.
(Ug didn't realize it of course but he had invented a method of clearing a choking
throat that thousands of years later would be discovered again and given a fancy name.)
Now Ugshug was very protective of Ug Lier. She didn't want Ug Li nor Ug sniffing
around her and when Ug hit Ug Lier Ugshug immediately thought that Ug was trying to
get another mate. She whipped out a long narrow piece of sharp flint and took a fighting position.
UG was a caveman with a caveman's mentality. He wasn't the smartest animal in the
woods but he knew the dang flint could cut him. So, he picked up his club and knocked
it out of Ugshug's hand. As the flint fell it sliced through one of the fish, cutting off a
slab of meat without bones. Of course these primitive people didn't know this at the
time but when they later ate the slab of fish and found it didn't have bones they realized
that the flint had cut them out.
It was a hit and miss proposition for a while. Ugshug would pick up the flint and hold it
over the fish and Ug would knock heck out of her hand to make her drop the flint.
Sometimes they got a boneless piece of fish this way and sometimes they did not.
But as I said, Ugshug was a thinking woman and she finally decided that she could drop
the flint without getting her hand rapped with a club. Within a generation Ug Lier had
evolved to using the flint to just cut out the bones. Thus the invention of fish fillets
and fillet knives.
Now eating fish fillets made life a lot easier for everyone except Ug who had to
wade into the creek with the broken chicken wishbone braided into his fur pants.
During the warm months Ug found that the creek was not all that bad. In fact it
was a change from the hot air and also made him smell better. It took him a couple
of years to compute that smelling better also improved his relations with Ugshug and
he didn't have to club her to get laid near as much. But that icy winter water was
not only uncomfortable, it made his thingie shrink up. But, poor old Ug had no choice.
Ugshug was expecting another little Ug and Ug Lier could eat her weight in fish fillets.
In any case it was safer and easier than trying to club down a hairy mammoth.
It was one of those cold days in the water that Ug finally had enough. He reached
down to pull it out to take a leak and it has shrunk so bad from the cold he pissed in
his fur pants while trying to find it. Now this did warm Ug up a bit. Made him so mad
he jerked off his pants and started beating the cold water with them and dang if a
fish didn't hit on a chicken bone and jerk the pants out of Ug's hands!
Well, what was Ug to do. There he was standing on the creek bank with his thingie
shriveled from the cold, naked because a dang fish had swam off with his pants
and fish hooks, and his son Ug Li laughing his butt off at the old man. Ug did what
any rational cave man would do. He knocked heck out of Ug Li and told him to go
chase down his pants.
Ug Li might not have been bright but he had figured the cold water would make his
thingie shrink just as it had old Ug's and he was not about to go into the water. So he
picked up a long limb with a fork on the end and run along the bank until he could
snag the pants. And when he pulled in the pants he pulled in a couple of fish along with them.
It did take a while for Ug to realize he had just invented a fishing pole. For the
first couple of months he would throw his pants in the water and Ug Li would chase
the down the stream with the limb until he could snag the pants and hope there was
a fish or two on the hooks. But finally one day Ug realized that he could just tie the
pants to the limb and Ug Li could run down the side of the stream with them. This
worked pretty good until one day Ug li got tired of running and sit down with the pole
in his hand and the pants in the water. While he was resting a fish pulled the pants under
and Ug Li jerked the pole and brought in the fish. The art of still fishing had been invented.
It wasn't long after that that he accidentally discovered that a broken wish bone on
a slender vine tied to the pole worked a heck of a lot better than dragging the furs
through the water with the hooks on them. As I said, Ug wasn't the brightest bear in
the woods but his mama only raised a couple of fools and they both got ate by the bear.
One day while he was at his favorite pastime, still fishing, (well, nearly his favorite
pastime but he could only play with Ugshug for a little while. He could fish all day long)
he noticed that the fish were hitting the top of the water eating bugs. He tried to catch
a bug but they were too fast for him. But this fact stuck in his mind and he thought
about it every once in a while. One day he was trying to get a wish bone hook out of his
fur pants that was all twisted up in the fur. Finally he gave up and just cut it out with the
fillet knife that he had invented. Being in a hurry he fumbled trying to tie the knot on
the vine and dropped the hook in the water and WHAM a fish hit it and took off. It took
him a day or two of thinking about this then the flash hit him. He took a club to his son
Ug-Li and his lazy butt son-in-law Oop ( whose descendant gained considerable fame some
centuries later as Alley Oop ) and forced them to bring in the wild chickens. After cooking
and devouring the chickens he and Ugshug worked for hours around the fire wishing on the
wishbones and twisting them in Ug's fur pants. After they had them all twisted up they
cut them out with the flint fillet knife and tied them onto a short piece of vine. Sure enough
the first time he tried it a fish took off with the furry hook. Of course it also took off
with the vine, he had got to excited about the furry hook to tie it to the fishing pole. But
next time he did and that's the way Ug invented the wooly worm fly. After that it was just
a short step of a few years to invent another variety and then progress was pretty fast.
Which brings up how he invented the tackle store.
During Ug's time families were a close knit social unit with a more or less patriarch
system of government, which meant Ug was the patriarch and he governed. His word
was law except when Ugshug decided that it wasn't. (Ain't it amazing that the more
times change the more they stay the same.) Well, Ug was fishing every day and catching
more fish then they could possibly eat and the cave was getting a bit stinky from the
rotten fish. They had already discovered that the rotten fish would make their dog puke
so they left them alone. They were giving fish to Oop's family and a couple of other family
groups a few caves down. But Ug kept his fishing secrets to himself. Only his son Ug-li
knew the secret and he was too lazy to fish anyway and knew his ass was grass if he told.
Then the time came when Ug got a little tired of fishing every day. Beer hadn't been
invented yet and catching fish was getting to be somewhat boring with nothing else to
pass the time. He thought about asking one of the other heads of family to come along
but then he'd have to share the secret of fishing. As he slowed down there was just
enough fish for the family and none to share. But there was a problem in cave land,
there was some people hooked on eating fish a couple of days a week. One of the local
shaman had decided that the spirits favored this and and wouldn't even let his family
eat anything but fish on Fridays! But there was a shortage of fish because Ug had quit
fishing so much. What to do-
One Friday morning the Shaman's wife approached Ug and said, "luk er Ug gutta ab fish."
Which in Caveman's lingo meant Look here Ug, I got to have some fish. When Ug
explained that he didn't have any fish by chasing her away with a club she got an idea.
The cavemen in the Shaman's social group supported the Shaman with food, mostly meat
that they had killed. It wasn't that he couldn't hunt himself but he figured that being
the voice of the spirits they owed it to him. Whenever they come up short he would tell
them, the spirits are gonna be pissed at you,and here would come the meat. Of course this
tactic didn't work on Ug who figured he could talk to the spirits pretty good without the
shaman,s help, thanks anyway. Point is that there was plenty of fresh meat that was going
to spoil at the Shaman's cave. His wife brought some over and offer a barter with Ug who
accepted. And that's how Ug became the first commercial fisherman. Within a few days
the word got out and the cave wives were bringing meat and then furs to trade for Ug's
fish. But catching more fish meant more work and Ug preferred to give that chore to
Ugshug and the family. Fishing was fun but this was getting to be a chore.
After a year of commercial fishing Ug hit upon a plan. He had all the meat he could and
his family could eat, plenty of fish, a cave full of furs, and life was pretty sweet except
for one thing. He was tired of fishing all the dang time! Then one day one of the other
cave bosses came to him with an offer. The man offered Ug a years supply of fish and
meat if Ug would just share the secret. Took a few days but Ug decided that was the
easiest way out. So he made the trade and sat on his butt just fishing for fun for a year.
He wasn't worried about the secret getting any further because part of the deal was
that it be kept a secret. This is the first known patent leasing agreement in history. But,
after a year the agreement was no longer valid except for the keeping the secret part.
Ug was going to have to go back to work.
But there were other cavemen in Caveville who were nearly as bright as Ug. Sneaky
sorts who would slip through the brush to spy on Ug and his neighbor to watch how
and where they caught the fish. One day Ug caught one of them and used his club but
the love of fish and fishing were just to great to keep a secret forever. Within a few
months every cave man was fishing every day. Ug was back to fishing himself for
food and the party was over. Until he remembered making the wooly worm fur flies.
That was one secret that he hadn't shared.
So one day he ambled up with a wooly worm fly on a vine attached to his pole and
slapped a fisherman with a club to get his attention. He then tossed the fly in the
stream and immediately caught a fish. Now fishermen are a different sort of people.
The word got out and Ug started getting the offers for the secret and the trading
started again. Ug went into the tackle business! He soon had the whole family making
fur wooly worm flies and tying them to vines. He expanded by carrying poles and
vines in his inventory and before long started to create different fly patterns that
imitated the bugs on the water he had noticed years before. Men flocked to his cave
trading the meat and furs that their women claimed that they needed for their families
and the fight over fishing began.
Ug lived a long happy life and passed onto that great fishing hole in the sky at the
ripe age of thirty. However his family carried out the fishing tradition and became
guides, boat makers, and manufacturers of fishing tackle. Centuries later one invented
the cast net which led to a seine net. Fishing became a national pastime for millions
and Ugs descendants profited from it. In recent years his descendants became
politicians and invented the fishing license and the 10 percent excise taxes on fishing
equipment so even the government would profit on fishing. Some of his descendants
went on to be shamans and preached the tradition of "fish on Friday" which was a
boon to their commercial fishing kin who shared part of the take with the shamans.
Today we eat canned fish, fish sticks,fresh fish, visit fish markets, and fishing stores all due to old Ug inventing fishing.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he soon will
need to buy a new fishing rod and reel, hooks, line, lures, a tackle box, a boat, a motor,
a trailer for the boat, and spend a lot of money on his sweetthing to keep peace in
the family. If you run a tackle business it is best to teach his sweetthing to fish also
because she will want a better fishing rod and reel than his and more of the same
lures and her own tackle box and she will just have to have that new fishing hat and---
