Fishing techniques

Hand-gathering

• Flounder tramping - Every August, the small Scottish village of Palnackie hosts the world flounder tramping championships where flounder are captured by stepping on them.
• Noodling: 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.
• Pearl divers - traditionally harvested oysters by free-diving to depths of thirty metres. Today, free-diving recreational fishers catch lobster and abalone by hand.
• Trout binning - A method of taking trout. Rocks in a rocky stream are struck with a sledgehammer. The force of the blow stuns the fish.
• Trout tickling - 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.

  Spearfishing

• Bowfishing - uses a bow and arrow to kill fish in shallow water from above.
• Gigging - 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.
• Hawaiian slings - have a sling separate from the spear, in the manner of an underwater bow and arrow.
• Harpoons - A spearfishing technique that was widely used not just for river, pond, lake or stream fishing; it was used also for whaling in open oceans. Evidence has been found of harpoons made out of bone in Brazil that are 5000 years old that may have been used to go hunt whales from the Arctic.
• Pike pole fishing and gaff fishing - Use handheld poles with sharp spikes to hit and impale fish.
• Polespears - have a sling attached to the spear.
• Modern spearguns - 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.
• Tridents - 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.

  Netting

• Cast nets - 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. This simple device has been in use, with various modifications, for thousands of years.
• Drift 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.
• Ghost nets - are nets that have been lost at sea. They can be a menace to marine life for many years.
• Gillnets - catch fish which try to pass through by snagging on the gill covers. Trapped, the fish can neither advance through the net nor retreat.
• Haaf nets - 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.
• Hand 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. Because hand netting is not destructive to fish, hand nets are used for tag and release, or capturing aquarium fish.
• Lift nets - are a method of fishing using nets that are submerged to a certain depth and then lifted out of the water vertically. The nets can be flat or shaped like a bag, a rectangle, a pyramid, or a cone. Lift nets can be hand-operated, boat-operated, or shore-operated. They typically use bait or a light-source as a fish-attractor.
• * Cheena vala - are shore operated lift nets from India. Huge mechanical contrivances hold out horizontal nets with diameters of twenty metres or more. The nets are dipped into the water and raised again, but otherwise cannot be moved. Its name means "Chinese fishing net", though it originates from Southeast Asia.
• * Salambaw - a type of traditional raft or barge-operated large lift nets from the Philippines. It utilizes a tall upright pole or a tower structure around in height. At the top of the pole are two large curving spars crossed with each other. A large square net is attached to the ends of these spars. The pole acts as a crane, it can be tilted to submerge the net using a weighted lever mechanism. The operator either pushes or pulls the lever, or climbs on it to bring it down with their body weight, thus raising the pole. A variation of the salambaw operated from large outrigger boats is known as basnigan.
• Seine nets - 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.
• Surrounding nets -
• Tangle 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.
• Trawl 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.

  Angling

Line fishing

• Droplining - 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.
• Handlining - 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.
• Pahila - 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,,,, hilada, or, among other names, in other Philippine languages.
• Jiggerpole - 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.
• Jigging - 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.
• Longlining - 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.
• Deadline - is the practice of leaving the baited line without a rod and returning for the fish later.
• Slabbing: is a bass fishing technique, that involves repetitively lifting and dropping a flat lure, usually made of 1 to 2.5 oz of lead painted to look like a baitfish, through a school of actively feeding fish that the angler has located on a fishfinder. Used on white and striped bass in the reservoirs of the southern USA.
• Trolling - is fishing with one or more baited lines which are drawn through the water. This may be done by pulling the line behind a slow moving boat, or by slowly winding the line in when fishing from the land. Trolling is used to catch pelagic fish such as mackerel and kingfish.
• Trotlining - a trotline is like a dropline, except that a dropline has a series of hooks suspended vertically in the water, while a trotline has a series of hooks suspended horizontally in the water. Trotlines can be physically set in many ways, such as tying each end to something fixed, and adjusting the set of the rest of the line with weights and floats. They are used for catching crabs or fish, such as catfish, particularly across rivers.