George Washington enjoyed fishing both as a gentleman's contemplative recreation and as a practical means of securing provisions while on the frontier. His diary records successful catches of a dolphin and shark in Barbados, a legendary catfish in the Ohio Country, and trout and perch during the recess of the Constitutional Convention in the hot summer of 1787. This case may be the "Fishing Case for the Pocket - properly furnished with Line &ca," that Washington ordered from London in 1762. Its contents - hand-wrought hooks, horsehair and silk fishing lines, and wax for preparing the lines - provide a rare glimpse of the tackle typically used by fishermen in colonial America.