Fishing Gear

There are and have been many fishing techniques employed by different people at different times throughout history. It is quite possible to locate fish with a minimal amount of equipment. It is even possible to catch wfish with one’s hands. In the United States catching a catfish with only one’s hands is called noodling.

Noodling may also be called graveling, grabbling, tickling, or hogging depending on which southern state you’re in. Though there are many strange names, it is most simply known as handfishing. Only five states of the United States have explicit laws permitting handfishing. Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee and Oklahoma all have laws explicitly permitting the right of individuals to handfish. In the year 2005, Missouri and Georgia have also adopted similar handfishing laws.

The term for handfishing known as ‘noodling’ is primarily used when dealing with the catching of flathead catfish and can be applied to all hand-based fishing methods, regardless of the species of fish or the methods, such as any of which that do not use rod and reel, bait, a spear gun, etc. This usage of the term ‘noodling’ has become much less common, however.

Though the concept of handfishing is quite simple, noodling fish with only the use of one’s hands, the actual process of noodling is somewhat more complicated. Flathead catfish live pretty solitary lifestyles in holes or under brush in lakes and rivers. Noodlers swim underwater and use their arms and hands ads bait to lure the catfish. When things go well, the catfish will swim toward the fisherman and latch onto his arm and hand.

Once a noodler’s spotter helps drag the fish back to shore, the spotter helps to remove the catfish from the noodler’s arm. Some catfish weight as much as fifty to sixty pounds and can be quite difficult to deal with alone unless the fish is already incapacitated.

Spear fishing is an ancient art as well, and may be conducted with any regular spear or a specialized variant like the trident or the eel spear. A small trident type of spear with a long handle is used in the American Midwest and South for ‘gigging’ bullfrogs with a bright light during the nighttime, or for gigging carp and other types of fish in the shallows.

There are fishing nets made out of mesh formed by knotted thin threads. Modern fishing nets are generally made of artificial polyamides such as nylon, although fishing nets of organic polyamides like silk or wool thread were common until much more recently and are still used in particular areas.

Fishing traps are sometimes used, and are culturally nearly universal. Fishing traps seem to have been separately invented many different times. Fishing traps are basically two types of trap, a semi-permanent or permanent structure that is placed in a tidal area or river, as well as pot traps that are baited to attract prey and are periodically checked and lifted.

In Japan and China, the practice of cormorant fishing is believed to date back more than 1300 years. Fisherman use to natural fishing instincts of the cormorants in order to catch fish, and a big metal rind is placed around the bird’s neck so that the caught fish cannot be swallowed. Since the 1500s in Portugal, Portuguese Water Dogs have been used by fisherman to send messages between boats, retrieve articles and fish from the water, as well as guard the boats.

Deon Melchior is the Editor and Publisher of Article Click. For more FREE articles for your ezine and websites visit ArticleClick.com. Article Click is a free content article directory. This means that as a publisher you may reprint the articles that are included in our site, as long as the article is unedited and the author box is included with it's live hyperlinks.