• Early fishing gear made use of indigenous materials and timeless designs.fishing image by KIERAN from Fotolia.com
  
  Ancient fishing tools are precursors of the tools anglers use today. Sonar and GPS fish finders have replaced reliance on weed lines or flocks of feeding birds to signal where to drop a line but the nets, hooks, spears and anchors of early seafaring people and river fishers were as functional in their time as the ones of synthetic fibers and composite metals used in contemporary fishing.
  
  

Ancient Hawaiian Fishing Technology

• Hawaii was a paradise of innovative fishing technology in ancient times. Nets were woven in various sizes and shapes to catch different kinds of fish. The Bishop Museum in Honolulu has nets that range from 27 feet to 92 feet long. Smaller fish were trapped in fine nets, woven of olona fiber. Braiding the line and knotting the net might take up to a year to complete. Large fish were also trapped in baskets. Lures made of cowry shell were dangled from canoes to tempt octopus. When the octopus grabbed the shell, the fisherman yanked it to set the hook, pulled the octopus against the canoe and hauled it in. No word on how one deals with an unhappy octopus in a canoe, but spear fishermen used sharpened points of stone or bone attached to poles of wood or bamboo so the octopus was likely dispatched with a spear or a knife. Turtle shell, dog or human bone or wood hooks on heavy line were used for deep sea fishing for larger fish.
  
  

Ancient Mediterranean Fishing Hooks and Tools

• The ancient Egyptians used metal for fishhooks with varying degrees of sophistication, depending on their abilities to work with the metals. In excavated tombs fishing hooks have been found made of copper, bronze and iron. Copper hooks were given barbs—the metal was soft enough to work but the Egyptians lacked the fuel and capacity to heat metal to the high temperatures necessary to fully harden it, so the sharp edges wore down quickly. Bronze mixed with copper was used for fishing hooks, but the hooks found have no barbs. And iron, which was supplied by the Greeks and hammered into shape, was also used to produce hooks with barbs.
  
  In ancient Bethsaida, a fishing village on the shore of the Sea of Galilee near the mouth of the Jordan River, archaeological digs have uncovered stores of iron anchors, fishing hooks, and lead weights used for nets, dating from the first century.
  
  

Early Native American Fishing Tools

• Native American spears were both status symbol and essential tools. The shafts were made of wood and the prongs or tips were copper, flint or obsidian. When used for fishing, long spears were often carved with a three-pronged tip. These could be used most easily in rivers and streams to spear fish. The California Chumash people, already well-established when the Spanish explorers and missionaries reached the California coast, were prosperous seafarers who relied on fishing and made fish hooks from worked abalone shells. According to the Santa Ynez Chumash tribal government, the shells were probably split and shaped with stone tools and used for catching feeding bottom fish.