Fishing

"Trout fishing scene", Natural history of western wild animals and guide for hunters, trappers, and sportsmen, 1875

Fishing is the activity of trying to catch fish. Fishing techniques include hand-gathering, spearing, netting, angling, shooting and trapping. The term fishing broadly includes catching aquatic animals other than fish, such as crustaceans (shrimp, lobsters or crabs), shellfish, cephalopods (octopi and squids) and echinoderms (starfish and sea urchins). The term is not normally applied to harvesting fish raised in controlled cultivations (fish farming), nor is it normally applied to hunting aquatic mammals, where terms like whaling and sealing are used instead.

Methods

Angling

Without fishing gear, several alternatives can be adopted. For angling, three main parts are needs: a hook, a line and bait. For improvising a hook, alternatives include paperclips, broken pop-tops, sharp twigs and bobby pins. For the line to which the hook is attached, materials include shoelaces, a clothing thread, twine, string, yarn, long strong grass, flax, or seaweed stems. To attrach a fish to the hook, bait is also needed; among the items that can be used as bait are food scraps (meat is ideal), bits of colorful plastic, leaves, dead insects and jewelry.

Once the fish bites, sccopt it up with your hands or an improvised net, as hauling it in with the line will likely make it to break.

Cornering

Cornering a fish means moving slowly towards them and backing the fish into an area where they cannot escape. The method is easier and more effective if you are assisted by someone. Possible materials to corner the fish include a length of cloth. Stretch out the length of cloth, making sure that there is no escape route underneath. If you are accompanied, your partner can hold the other end. Grab the fish once they are backed into a sufficiently small area, preferably with a container to toss them into or scoop them.

Scooping

Scooping consists in trapping fish between two containers. Options include buckets, empty containers and plastic bags. After finding fish in a relatively small space, such as a tidepool or a small pond, lower the scoops slowly into the water. Bring both scoops together once the fish comfortable with the scoops and settle between them.

Spearing

See also: Spear

As with other methods when improvising, there are several options to consider for the sharp end of the stick, including a pocket knife, scrap metal, glass, hard plastic, scissor blades or just sharpening the stick where the items would usually be attached to. If a sharp object is used, twine, shoelaces, or other strings can be used to attach them to the stick or pole.

Traps

Improvised materials for a container include clothing, a bucket, a jar, a plastic container or a plastic bag. Fish tend to hide in shadowy areas, including below overhanging trees, the overhangs of banks, within water plants, or near rocks. Lay the trap in a likely fish hideout, and wait for fish to swim in. It's important to be patient, and if you're holding the trap, you should wait until the fish get used to the presence of your hands. Pull up the trap as soon as a fish swims in.

See also

• Hunting
• Gathering
• Bow and arrow

External links

• How To Make Various Types Of Traps And Pots - Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
• How to Make a Primitive Funnel Fish Trap that keeps on giving - Willow Haven Outdoor
• How To…Catch a Fish with Your Bare Hands - Sam Holder, 3 June 2009, Portland Monthly
• The Manual - How to spear a fish - 13 October 2010, Esquire
• 25 Survival Tips Even Bear Grylls Wouldn't Try - Jacob Ormrod, 7 November 2018, The Travel
• How to Make a Survival Fishing Hook - Ron Jaxon, Snapguide
• Category:Fishing - WikiHow

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Fishing, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (view authors).