A chance to get hooked

June Casagrande

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man about Newport

Harbor’s fishing heritage, and his mind enjoys the feast for a

lifetime.

The Newport Harbor Nautical Museum is about to unveil an exhibit

of an often overlooked but integral part of the harbor’s history:

sport fishing. “Hooked! The Lure and Lore of Sportfishing” will open

Saturday with relics as old as the first rod and reel and as new as

an interactive sportfishing simulator.

“Besides just our local yachting heritage, we also have an

important power-boating and sport-fishing heritage,” said Glenn

Zagoren, president of the museum.

Photographs and paintings in the exhibit depict some of the

earliest moments of the fledgling sport, including images of famous

early sport fishermen such as Winston Churchill and Zane Gray.

Another portion of the exhibit is dedicated to women sport fishers.

But the vast majority of the exhibit is made up of fascinating early

relics of the sport, 95% of them on loan from the John Dickens

Historical Tackle Collection.

“The collection shows the whole evolution of the rod and reel,”

said Marcus De Chevrieux, curator of the museum.

On display will be the rod and reel owned by Charles Frederick

Holder, considered the father of sportfishing who also helped found

the Rose Parade and the Tuna Club of Avalon. Holder’s 1898 capture of

a 183-pound bluefin tuna with a rod and reel was the defining moment

in the sport’s inception, De Chevrieux said, marking the worldwide

birth of the sport of big game fishing.

From this starting point, the exhibit extends all the way to the

present, with some stunning state-of-the-art items, such as a

high-tech rod and reel that won’t be marketed until next year and a

virtual sportfishing station.

Virtual anglers can sit in a “fighting chair,” from which they

operate a specially rigged fishing rod. A computer carefully

evaluates their moves as they try to reel in the jumping marlin on

the screen in front of them.

“It’s really cool,” Zagoren said.