Tippets: Oldest Fishing Hooks Found, Triggering a Trout Strike

September 29, 2016 By: Erin Block

  • On Okinawa Island between mainland Japan and Taiwan researchers have found the world’s oldest fish hook to date. The hooks, carved from shells, date back approximately 23,000 years and were used to catch parrotfish and eels. The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Via Science Magazine.
  • In an excerpt from The Bug Book: A Fly Fisher’s Guide to Trout Stream Insects, published by Headwater Books and MidCurrent, author Paul Weamer details how fly patterns can trigger a trout to strike. “A trigger mechanism is a fly pattern component that makes a fish choose to eat it,” writes Weamer. “Many times a trout has swum beneath my dry fly, looked at it, and refused to eat it. Those flies did not have good trigger mechanisms for that fish on that day.”