Angling Echoes October 2018
Angling Echoes October 2018; About This Issue
This is a strange issue, which is probably right in line with October being a strange month. For some reason I collected a lot of oddball articles this month, as these kinds of things always interest me, and I hope will interest you as well. It seems fitting for a month that’s crowned by Halloween.
The feature article this month is by Claude E. Holgate and is a great work on fishing for channel bass. It shows the classic method of surf fishing and contains some iconic photos, including one on Page 6 that was reproduced numerous times over the years. Well written and interesting, it is historically important as well, and even includes anecdotes about A.F. “Gus” Meisselbach, the legendary reel maker and outstanding surf angler.
My favorite piece in this issue is the 1855 pictorial featuring Mr. Slim, a character from Harper’s magazine. It reproduces everything including the tackle for a pre-Civil War fishing trip, and thus serves as a really important historical piece from an era in which little or no known photographs of fishing tackle exist.
Being a fish hook guy myself (as an avid collector and historian), I loved the piece by Christensen on the history of the fish hook. He was a noted German authority on the subject.
Dr. James Henshall’s 1918 article on the grayling illuminates both his love for this fish and his enormous influence on its protection and propagation. The grayling is truly one of the great fish, and the loss of the Michigan Grayling is one of the nation’s great environmental tragedies.
Tarpon fishing is a world of its own, and H.M. Hampton’s 1918 piece comes from the Golden Age of Tarpon Fishing. It is also notable for its classic photos.
Other pieces include an article by noted tackle merchant Wakeman Holberton (1884) on how to buy tackle, Louis Papineau’s “Spinning for Large Trout” (1897), noted consular service officer A.V. Dockery’s chapter on the catfish and suckers of North Carolina (1909), and Samuel G. Camp’s piece on the pike family (1911), which is an excerpt from his book The Fine Art of Fishing. “A Buffalo Fish Story” details a musky as big as the child who caught it. Herschel Brown gives us a glimpse at a unique method of fishing in Arizona. And a 1930 article details the successes of the Pflueger family of Akron, Ohio.
Geographically, William Keefer covers the West Coast with a great piece on Oregon, while H. Guy Grimmel uncovers the hidden treasures of Chesapeake Bay, although his seeming wanton slaughter of bass appears a bit outrageous by today’s standards.
As mentioned there are several odd little vignettes about fish, and the piece by Thomas C. Bowlker from 1826 is as strange as it gets, detailing a pike of truly prodigious size that thought nothing of munching a ten pound carp. An 1893 piece on things found swallowed by fishes is interesting, as is the 1894 article on sea fishing at night in Britain — a more dangerous proposition than it might seem. An 1896 article on bird-killing fishes and a 1963 piece on catching a duck rounds out the oddities for this month.
As always, we would love to hear any feedback you have on Angling Echoes. Please email us at anglingechoes@gmail.com with your kind (or not so kind) comments!
