On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:47:21 -0500, jeff
wrote:

Wolfgang wrote:

"Dave LaCourse" wrote in message
...

On Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:24:19 -0500, jeff
wrote:


"trail": [def. #14] - "to fish by trailing a line from a moving boat;
troll."

I stand corrected on the dictionary fact. It is, however, not called
trailing in the U.S. And I believe you know that.


Well, maybe not everywhere in the U. S. And maybe not now.

So, I checked. I checked 42 sources, all but one American publications
prior to 1920. I found exactly one indisputable reference (in Henry Van
Dyke's "Fisherman's Luck") to "trailing" in the sense in which it is used in
this thread, which is to say as a synonym for "trolling." A couple of
others arguably approach that sense, but I remain dubious.

I have many other publications, both British and American, but,
unfortunately, they have not yet been converted to searchable text. De
nada, 41 samples should be sufficient to inspire a reasonable confidence
that the term "trailing" was, while not entirely unheard of, not in common
use in the sense of "trolling" in the 19th or early 20th centuries in
America.

Meanwhile, the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica offers up this
little gem: "The other method of using the fly, harling, which is practised
on a few big rivers, consists in trailing the fly behind a boat rowed
backward and forwards across the stream and dropping gradually downwards."
Note here, that the synonym for "trolling" used here is "harling."
"Trailing," in this instance appears to be simply a descriptive term used to
explain the practice, emphatically NOT the name of the practice.

Conversely, a footnote to the article on angling reads as follows: "Trolling
is very commonly confused in angling writing and talk with trailing, which
simply means drawing a spinning-bait along behind a boat in motion."

The closest we come to a definition of trolling in the same article:
"Trolling, the method of "sink and draw" with a dead bait, referred to
previously in this article, is not much practised nowadays..."

Several other occurrences of the word "trolling" in the article shed no
further light on the matter.


From the personal experience desk......

In half a century of paying close attention to the English language as she
is spoke here in the colonies, I do not recall ever coming across "trailing"
used in the sense in which we commonly use "trolling," either in
contemporary literature or in the spoken tongue.


Back to the dictionary.....

The folks at Random House, by defining "trail" as a synonym for "troll" and
listing this as the 14th definition, appear to agree that this is an
uncommon usage here. I suggest that "vanishingly" would be a good adjective
to use in quantifying just how uncommon.


Bottom line......

Trolling, indisputably the preferred term here in the U. S., is used, for
all practical purposes, exclusively. Trailing is virtually extinct in this
sense, and appears never to have been widespread or popular.....or at least
not within the last century.

Wolfgang



and there you have it...i should've read ahead before responding to
dave's note. my suspicion was trailing morphed into trolling at some
point, though i'd never known anything about it if the issue had not
been used here. thanks for the analysis... now, all those other sources
you didn't check, wonder what they have to say? g

I don't understand why someone in Europe, speaking a native European
language would use either (in their native language). There are
words/phrases in French, Spanish, German, etc. for fishing by
"trolling/trailing." I think you'll find that "trail" comes from Latin
(traher - drag) filtered through (Old) French (traillier or something
similar) and "troll" (as used in fishing, at least) is English, but I'd
also say not to take "traher/drag" as an indication that "trailing" is
the "correct" word. I'd offer that "troll," via its "to roll"
definition, is probably the origin of the now-common fishing usage and
"roll" ties into the Romance language terms for fishing by "trolling."

I'd further offer that since the technique, whatever one calls it, is by
its boating requirements versus its payoffs, is a fairly new technique.
I'd further offer that somehow, the term "trawl" comes into play as it
as technique was certainly more wide-spread, or at least widely
known-of, technique. IOW, if all I've got, boat-wise, is a square-rig
sailboat and a chance at good air, I'm not pulling a single expensive
hook that I need a forge, etc. to make, I'm pulling a net - a trawl
(i.e., trawling) that I can make with nothing more than the material, a
stick sharpened into a rigging needle, and my hands. IMO, "trawl"
becomes "troll" easier than "trail."

Plus, I'd offer that even if someone personally uses "trailing" (either
in English or their closest native-language translation), they'd
understand what was meant if another said "trolling" (in a fishing
context), whereas if you approached many fishers and asked about
"trailing" (again, English or the closest translation in whatever
language), many would not realize you meant what they called "trolling."

TC,
R

jeff