My first reaction to this article, titled “Complex Fish Traps Over 7,500 Years Old Found in Russia”:
An international team of archeologists, led by Ignacio Clemente, a researcher with the Spanish National Research Council, has discovered and documented an assemblage of fish seines and traps in the Dubna Basin near Moscow that are dated to be more than 7,500 years old. They say that the equipment, among the oldest found in Europe, displays a surprisingly advanced technical complexity. The finds illuminate the role of fishing among European settlements of the early Holocene (about 10,000 years ago), particularly where people did not practice agriculture until just before the advent of the Iron Age.
was “I wonder if they caught anything?”
My second reaction was to wonder if they’d found containers that might have once held beer in the vicinity of the traps.
I have old and fond memories of helping my Uncle George (he wasn’t my blood uncle but rather the husband of my maternal grandmother’s best friend and the closest thing I had to a grandfather) tend his trout lines. For several years running when I was a kid I spent a week with them in their house on stilts “down on the riverr”, on the banks of the Meramec River. I don’t ever recall his catching anything but I do recall his consuming a certain amount of beer in the process.
You know what they say: give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he’ll sit in a boat and drink beer all day.
Or spend all day shopping at BassPro.
You sound as though you’d met my former business partner.
I don’t ever recall his catching anything but I do recall his consuming a certain amount of beer in the process.
A certain amount? 🙂
Didn’t have to go that far. Remember, I live in the “Sportmen’s Paradise” state.
For the record, one can sit on shore, or a dock, or a sea wall, et ecetera and drink beer all day too.
I only knew George to get drunk once. That was at Thanksgiving at my mom’s house. He was quite elderly at that point, in his 80s, and had been drinking highballs (bourbon).
I too found “fishing” more fun than fishing. But you can’t “fish” with people serious about fishing because they don’t appreciate the noise, and “fishing” alone is kind of sad. Best then to stick to a bench on the shore, but not too close to icepick.
My version of fishing:
“What’s the catch of the day?”