Fishing Techniques

When you spend most of your time on the water fishing techniques are a common conversation. In today’s post, we will go over a few of the most common types of fishing techniques practiced.

• Hand Gathering is a fishing practice that utilizes minimal resources in order to gather fish, crabs and other edible marine life such as mussels and clams. Shellfish gathering has been in practice for more than 300,000 years. One common example of Hand Gathering in America is Noodling for catfish. Noodling involves the person to actually sticking their hand into a catfish hole luring the fish to bite them so they may pull them out of the water.
  
• Spearfishing is another ancient method for fishing. A person wielding a tool such a sharpened stick, spear or even an arrow pierces the fish usually in a shallow water setting
  
• Net Fishing is another method of catching fish that has been used approximately 180AD and was even written about by Greek author Oppian. Traditionally nets were made from natural knotted fibers and either cast off of boats or by making scoop nets which can be held by the fisherman. Net fishing has become very common in commercial fisheries and can often lead to wasteful by-catch as well as contributes to the global crisis of ghost-fishing.
  
• Angling is another popular method of fishing and involves the use of a hook and line system often with a bobber attached in order to catch fish one at a time. This is another of the oldest and most sustainable methods of fishing as it eliminates over catch and bycatch. Angling can be done with or without the use of a rod.