Fishing techniques

Fishing techniques are methods for catching fish. The term may also be applied to methods for catching other aquatic animals such as molluscs (shellfish, squid, octopus) and edible marine invertebrates.

Fishing techniques include hand-gathering, spearfishing, netting, angling and trapping. Recreational, commercial and artisanal fishers use different techniques, and also, sometimes, the same techniques. Recreational fishers fish for pleasure or sport, while commercial fishers fish for profit. Artisanal fishers use traditional, low-tech methods, for survival in developing countries, and as a cultural heritage in other countries. Mostly, recreational fishers use angling methods and commercial fishers use netting methods.

There is an intricate link between various fishing techniques and knowledge about the fish and their behaviour including migration, foraging and habitat. The effective use of fishing techniques often depends on this additional knowledge.^[1] Which techniques are appropriate is dictated mainly by the target species and by its habitat.^[2]

Fishing techniques can be contrasted with fishing tackle. Fishing tackle refers to the physical equipment that is used when fishing, whereas fishing techniques refers to the manner in which the tackle is used when fishing.

- Every August, the small Scottish village of Palnackie hosts the world flounder tramping championships where flounder are captured by stepping on them.

Flounder tramping

: Practiced in the United States, mostly in the South. The noodler places his hand inside a catfish hole. If all goes as planned, the catfish swims forward and latches onto the noodler's hand, and can then be dragged out of the hole, albeit with risk of injury to the noodler.^[5]

Noodling

- traditionally harvested oysters by free-diving to depths of thirty metres.^[6] Today, free-diving recreational fishers catch lobster and abalone by hand.

Pearl divers

- A method of taking trout. Rocks in a rocky stream are struck with a sledgehammer. The force of the blow stuns the fish.^[7]

Trout binning

- In the British Isles, the practice of catching trout by hand is known as trout tickling; it is an art mentioned several times in the plays of Shakespeare.^[8]

Trout tickling

It is possible to harvest many sea foods with minimal equipment by using the hands. Gathering seafood by hand can be as easy as picking shellfish or kelp up off the beach, or doing some digging for clams or crabs. The earliest evidence for shellfish gathering dates back to a 300,000-year-old site in France called Terra Amata. This is a hominid site as modern Homo sapiens did not appear in Europe until around 50,000 years ago.^[3]^[4]

- uses a bow and arrow to kill fish in shallow water from above.

Bowfishing

- uses small trident type spears with long handles for gigging bullfrogs with a bright light at night, or for gigging suckers and other rough fish in shallow water. Gigging is popular in the American South and Midwest.

Gigging

- have a sling separate from the spear, in the manner of an underwater bow and arrow.

Hawaiian slings

- Spearfishing with barbed poles was widespread in palaeolithic times.^[11] Cosquer Cave in Southern France contains cave art over 16,000 years old, including drawings of seals which appear to have been harpooned.

Harpoons

and gaff fishing - Use handheld poles with sharp spikes to hit and impale fish.

Pike pole fishing

- have a sling attached to the spear.

Polespears

- traditional spearfishing is restricted to shallow waters, but the development of the speargun has made the method much more efficient. With practice, divers are able to hold their breath for up to four minutes and sometimes longer. Of course, a diver with underwater breathing equipment can dive for much longer periods.

Modern spearguns

- are three-pronged spears. They are also called leisters or gigs. They are used for spear fishing and were formerly also a military weapon. They feature widely in early mythology and history.

Tridents

Spearfishing is an ancient method of fishing conducted with an ordinary spear or a specialized variant such as a harpoon, trident, arrow or eel spear.^[9]^[10] Some fishing spears use slings (or rubber loops) to propel the spear.

- are round nets with small weights distributed around the edge. They are also called throw nets. The net is cast or thrown by hand in such a manner that it spreads out on the water and sinks. Fish are caught as the net is hauled back in.^[12] This simple device has been in use, with various modifications, for thousands of years.

Cast nets

- are nets which are not anchored. They are usually gillnets, and are commonly used in the coastal waters of many countries. Their use on the high seas is prohibited, but still occurs.

Drift nets

- are nets that have been lost at sea. They can be a menace to marine life for many years.

Ghost nets

- catch fish which try to pass through by snagging on the gill covers. Trapped, the fish can neither advance through the net nor retreat.

Gillnets

- mainly used in the Solway Firth forming part of the border between England and Scotland. Brought to Great Britain by the Vikings a thousand years ago, the technique involves the fisherman wading out to deep waters with a large rectangular net and waiting for salmon to swim into it. The fish is then scooped up by the raising of the net.

Haaf nets

- are small nets held open by a hoop. They have been used since antiquity. They are also called scoop nets, and are used for scooping up fish near the surface of the water. They may or may not have a handle–if they have a long handle they are called dip nets. When used by anglers to help land fish they are called landing nets.^[13] Because hand netting is not destructive to fish, hand nets are used for tag and release, or capturing aquarium fish.

Hand nets

Lift nets

[14]

- are large fishing nets that can be arranged in different ways. In purse seining fishing the net hangs vertically in the water by attaching weights along the bottom edge and floats along the top. Danish seining is a method which has some similarities with trawling. A simple and commonly used fishing technique is beach seining, where the seine net is operated from the shore.

Seine nets

-

Surrounding nets

- also known as tooth nets, are similar to gillnets except they have a smaller mesh size designed to catch fish by the teeth or upper jaw bone instead of by the gills.^[17]

Tangle nets

- are large nets, conical in shape, designed to be towed in the sea or along the sea bottom. The trawl is pulled through the water by one or more boats, called trawlers. The activity of pulling the trawl through the water is called trawling.

Trawl nets

Fishing nets are meshes usually formed by knotting a relatively thin thread. About 180 AD the Greek author Oppian wrote the Halieutica, a didactic poem about fishing. He described various means of fishing including the use of nets cast from boats, scoop nets held open by a hoop, and various traps "which work while their masters sleep".

Netting is the principal method of commercial fishing, though longlining, trolling, dredging and traps are also used.

- a dropline consists of a long fishing line set vertically down into the water, with a series of baited hooks Droplines have a weight at the bottom and a float at the top. They are not usually as long as longlines and have fewer hooks.

Droplining

- is fishing with a single fishing line, baited with lures or bait fish, which is held in the hands. Handlining can be done from boats or from the shore. It is used mainly to catch groundfish and squid, but smaller pelagic fish can also be caught.

Handlining

- is a traditional method of shoreline trolling in the Philippines. It uniquely uses baited hooks tied to a laterally flattened float called palyaw shaped like a small outrigger boat, a catamaran, or a fish. A long line is attached to the float. It is set unto the water's edge and dragged by someone running or walking along the beach. The combination of the water resistance and the diagonal pull forces the float outwards into deeper waters, like a kite. Once it reaches its maximum line length, it moves rapidly parallel to the person pulling it along the beach. It is pulled back to the shore intermittently to check for catches. Pahila literally means "pulled". It is also called subid-subid, sibid-sibid, paguyod, pahinas, hilada, or saliwsiw, among other names, in other Philippine languages.^[18]^[19]^[20]

Pahila

- is a method of fishing for bass. It is built on using a cane pole with the line of at least 30lb. test, tied well down at the pole of about three quarters length in the typical cane pole manner, and then securely at the tip with about a foot to foot and a half length to drop in the water. Place a swivel on the end of the line. The trick is to linger the lure in a specific area going back and forth, maneuvering the tip of the cane pole in the water causing a noise to attract a bass to see a jig getting after a ripple of water the pole tip is causing.

Jiggerpole

- is the practice of fishing with a jig, a type of fishing lure. A jig consists of a lead sinker with a hook molded into it and usually covered by a soft body to attract fish. Jigs are intended to create a jerky, vertical motion, as opposed to spinnerbaits which move through the water horizontally.

Jigging

- is a commercial technique that uses a long heavy fishing line with a series of hundreds or even thousands of baited hooks hanging from the main line by means of branch lines called "snoods". Longlines are usually operated from specialised boats called longliners. They use a special winch to haul in the line, and can operate in deeper waters targeting pelagic species such as swordfish, tuna, halibut and sablefish.

Longlining

Deadline - is the practice of leaving the baited line without a rod (usually over night) and returning for the fish later.

[21]

Artisanal techniques

artisanal

Basket weir fish traps - were widely used in ancient times. They are shown in medieval illustrations and surviving examples have been found. Basket weirs are about 2 m long and comprise two wicker cones, one inside the other—easy to get into and hard to get out.

[28]

- In medieval Europe, large fishing weir structures were constructed from wood posts and wattle fences. V-shaped structures in rivers could be as long as 60 metres and worked by directing fish towards fish traps or nets. Such fish traps were evidently controversial in medieval England. Magna Carta includes a clause requiring that they be removed: "All fish-weirs shall be removed from the Thames, the Medway, and throughout the whole of England, except on the sea coast".^[29]

Fishing weir

- operate alongside streams, much as a water-powered mill wheel. A wheel complete with baskets and paddles is attached to a floating dock. The wheel rotates due to the current of the stream. The baskets on the wheel capture fish travelling upstream and transfer them into a holding tank. When the holding tank is full, the fish are removed.

Fish wheels

- also called lobster pots, are traps used to catch lobsters. They resemble fish traps, yet are usually smaller and consist of several sections. Lobster traps are also used to catch other crustaceans, such as crabs and crayfish. They can be constructed in various shapes, but the design strategy is to make the entry into the trap much easier than exit. The pots are baited and lowered into the water and checked frequently. Historically lobster pots were constructed with wood or metal. Today most traps are made from checkered wire and mesh. It is common for the trap to be weighted down with bricks. A bait bag is hung in the middle of the trap. In theory the lobster walks up the mesh and then falls into the wire trap. Bait varies from captain to captain but it is common to use herring. In commercial lobstering five to ten of these traps will be connected with line. A buoy marks each end of the string of pots. Two buoys are important to make retrieval easier and so captains do not set their traps over each other. Each buoy is painted differently so the various captains can identify their traps.

Lobster traps

Traps are culturally almost universal and seem to have been independently invented many times. There are essentially two types of trap, a permanent or semi-permanent structure placed in a river or tidal area and pot-traps that are baited to attract prey and periodically lifted.

Cooperative human-dolphin fisheries date back to the author and natural philosopher Pliny the Elder.^[30] A modern human-dolphin fishery still takes place in Laguna, Santa Catarina, Brazil and a few other places in the world. In Laguna, men stand in shallow waters of the lagoon, or sit in canoes, forming a line, and waiting for the dolphins to appear. One or more resident dolphins drives fish towards the waiting fishermen. Then at a critical moment when the dolphins are close enough to the fishermen, one dolphin emerges from the water for an average duration of 1.4 seconds,^[31] performing a unique sequence of movements not otherwise seen in the wild. This sequence serves as a signal to the fishermen to cast their throw nets. The dolphins then feed off the fish that manage to escape the nets.^[32]^[33] In this unique form of fishing, the dolphins gain because the fish are disoriented and because the fish cannot escape to shallow waters where the larger dolphins cannot reach them. Likewise, studies show that fishermen casting their nets following the unique signal catch more fish than when fishing alone, without the involvement of the dolphins.^[34]

ancient Roman

- In China and Japan, the practice of cormorant fishing is thought to date back some 1300 years. Fishermen use the natural fish-hunting instincts of the cormorants to catch fish, but a metal ring placed round the bird's neck prevents large, valuable fish from being swallowed. The fish are instead collected by the fisherman.^[35]

Cormorant fishing

Frigatebirds fishing - The people of used trained frigatebirds to fish on reefs.

Nauru

- Dating from the 16th century in Portugal, Portuguese Water Dogs were used by fishermen to send messages between boats, to retrieve fish and articles from the water, and to guard the fishing boats. Labrador Retrievers have been used by fishermen to assist in bringing nets to shore; the dog would grab the floating corks on the ends of the nets and pull them to shore.

Portuguese Water Dogs

Remora fishing - The practice of tethering a , a sucking fish, to a fishing line and using the remora to capture sea turtles probably originated in the Indian Ocean. The earliest surviving records of the practice are Peter Martyr d'Anghera's 1511 accounts of the second voyage of Columbus to the New World (1494).^[36] However, these accounts are probably apocryphal, and based on earlier, no longer extant accounts from the Indian Ocean region.

remora

- a traditional method of fishing in the Philippines that combines the use of bag nets and attracting fish with high-powered lamps. Specialized outrigger boats known as basnigan are used.

Basnig

- is another recently developed technique, primarily used in freshwater by fisheries scientists. Electrofishing uses electricity to stun fish so they can be caught. It is commonly used in scientific surveys, sampling fish populations for abundance, density, and species composition. When performed correctly, electrofishing results in no permanent harm to fish, which return to their natural state a few minutes after being stunned.

Electrofishing

Fish aggregating devices

Lampuki nets

- There are types of dredges used for collecting scallops, oysters or sea cucumbers from the seabed. They have the form of a scoop made of chain mesh and they are towed by a fishing boat. Dredging can be destructive to the seabed, because the marine life is unable to survive the weight of the dredge. It is extremely detrimental to coral beds since they take centuries to rebuild themselves. Unmonitored dredging can be compared to unmonitored forest clearing, where it can wipe out ecosystems. Nowadays, this method of fishing is often replaced by mariculture or by scuba diving.

Dredging

- are electronic sonar devices which indicate the presence of fish and fish schools. They are widely used by recreational fishermen. Commercially, they are used with other electronic locating and positioning devices.

Fish finders

- use lights attached (above or underwater) to some structure to attract fish and bait fish. Fishing light attractor are operated every night. After a while, fish discover the increased concentration of bait surrounding the light. Once located, the fish return regularly, and can be harvested.

Fishing light attractors

- also called bottom bouncing. A method of angling usually used for salmon. It uses a hook and bait attached to a weighted bouncer dragged along the bottom of a stream or river.

Flossing

Harvesting machines - have recently been developed for commercial fishing. Harvesting machines use pumps to pump fish out of the sea. Dredges have also been mechanized so that they directly transfer mollusks to the surface as are dredged.

- a type of fish aggregating device used in Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines. Payaos were traditionally bamboo rafts for handline fishing before World War II, but modern steel payaos use fish lights and fish location sonar to increase yields. While payaos fishing is sustainable on a small scale, the large scale, modern applications have been linked to adverse impacts on fish stocks.

Payaos

- is a method used by recreational fisherman for of catching shrimp. It uses a cast net, bait and long poles. The poles are used to mark a specific location and then bait is thrown in the water near the pole. After several minutes the cast net is thrown as close to the bait as possible and shrimp are caught in the net. In the 1980s the sport became popular in the southeastern coastal states of the US.

Shrimp baiting

also known as snatching, jagging (in Australian English) or foul hooking, uses large, sharp, multi-pointed hooks tethered by a fishing line to pierce and grapple the fish externally. This is achieved by pulling the line out of the water very rapidly as soon as any movement is felt on the line, with the intention of impaling the hook point directly through the fish's skin and "clawing" firmly into the flesh like a gaff.^[37]^[38]

Snagging

Laksegiljer - small cabins standing on stilts where a fisherman sits. This method of fishing entails a net where the opening is controlled by a line tied to a rock. Under the cabin on the seabed is a white plank. When a salmon swims across the plank, the fisherman sees it and throws the rock into the water so the line closes the opening of the net, trapping the salmon. In this method of fishing is banned, but in Osterfjord locals can obtain a special permit to use this method in order to maintain the old traditions.

Norway

History[edit]

Ancient remains of spears, hooks and fish net have been found in ruins of the Stone Age. The people of the early civilization drew pictures of nets and fishing lines in their arts (Parker 2002). Early hooks were made from the upper bills of eagles and from bones, shells, horns and plant thorns. Spears were tipped with the same materials, or sometimes with flints. Lines and nets were made from leaves, plant stalk and cocoon silk. Literature on the indigenous fishing practices is very scanty. Baines (1992) documented traditional fisheries in the Solomon Islands. Use of the herbal fish poisons in catching fishes from fresh water and sea documented from New Caledonia (Dahl 1985). John (1998) documented fishing techniques and overall life style of the Mukkuvar fishing Community of Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu, India. Tribal people using various plants for medicinal and various purposes (Rai et al. 2000; Singh et al. 1997; Lin 2005) extends the use notion for herbal fish stupefying plants. Use of the fish poisons is very old practice in the history of human kind. In 1212, King Frederick II prohibited the use of certain plant piscicides, and by the 15th century similar laws had been decreed in other European countries as well (Wilhelm 1974). All over the globe, indigenous people use various fish poisons to kill the fishes, documented in America (Jeremy 2002) and among Tarahumara Indian (Gajdusek 1954).

: Fishing gears and methods

FAO

: Fact Sheets: Fishing Technique

FAO

: Fact Sheets: Fishing Gear type

FAO

: (1964) Modern Fishing Gear Of The World 2 Fishing News Books. Resulting from the first FAO Fishing Gear Congress held in Hamburg in 1957. Download PDF (69MB)

FAO

: (1971) Modern Fishing Gear Of The World 3: Fish finding, purse seining and aimed trawling Fishing News Books. Editor Hilmar Kristjohsson. Download PDF (56MB)

FAO

: Fishing gear fact cards Retrieved 23 January 2012.

Seafood Watch

Schultz, Ken (1999). . John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-02-862057-7.

Fishing Encyclopedia: Worldwide Angling Guide

Gabriel O, von Brandt A, Lange K, Dahm E and Wendt T (2005) Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-0-85238-280-6.

Fish catching methods of the world

Galbraith R D and A Rice after E S Strange (2004) Archived 2008-06-11 at the Wayback Machine Scottish Fisheries Information Pamphlet No. 25.

An Introduction to Commercial Fishing Gear and Methods Used in Scotland

Prado J and Dremière PY (eds.) (1990) FAO, Rome. ISBN 0-85238-163-8.

Fisherman's workbook

Waldman, John (2005) Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0-8117-3179-9

100 Weird Ways to Catch Fish

UN Atlas of the Oceans:

Fish capture technology

Seafood Watch, Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Fishing & Farming Methods

: Fishing methods