We tend to associate landing fish with modern methods like spin casting or fly fishing with traditional rods and reels or possibly a net. However, from buckets and barrels to fishing with animals, some very unique fishing techniques have been implemented through the ages in different parts of the world.
1. Stilt Fishing
Originating in Sri Lanka, this ancient angling technique involves climbing up a stick or stilt in the water. Attached to the stilt is another piece of wood jutting out at a right angle. The fisher sits on this piece, often for hours at a time. Stilt fishers go out at low tide and fish the rising waters.
2. Using Buckets
In Louisiana, bucket fishing is generally far more effective than any rod or reel when fishing for catfish. The technique involves lowering a weighted bucket into the water during spawning season. The bucket has openings just large enough to allow the catfish to freely enter but make it difficult for them to escape.
A similar technique is used in parts of Southeast Asia, where fishers use giant baskets up to 7 feet in diameter. The fish enter the basket seeking safe refuge but are instead trapped as the basket is raised and the water flows out.
3. Poisonous Plant Fishing
In South America, Indigenous tribes fish with poisonous plants. When food is scarce, they extract juice from select plant species, releasing chemical compounds into the water. When this substance reacts with oxygen in the water, it leaves fish without the gases necessary for respiration. This renders the fish dizzy, making them easy to collect by hand. After a few hours, the poison’s effect dissipates, and the fish return to normal.
4. Ice Fishing
Traditionally practiced in the world’s coldest, most northerly regions, ice fishing involves catching fish via an opening in the surface of a frozen body of water. The technique has been used for more than a millennium by Indigenous peoples like the Inuit, for whom ice fishing has been essential to survival. The Inuit are credited with some of the most ingenious fishing instruments and techniques ever seen. To spear fish through the ice, the Inuit use a kakivak, a spear with a central prong and two side arms incorporating inward-facing blades that hook into fish to prevent them from escaping.
Ice fishing remains popular throughout Canada, the United States, Finland, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, and Russia, with several countries organizing annual ice fishing tournaments attended by thousands of avid anglers.
5. Catfish Noodling
Native Americans have used this technique for centuries, long before European settlers arrived and adopted the practice, establishing the tradition along the Mississippi and throughout the South. Noodling remains an incredibly popular fishing technique in some places today, although in some regions it is strictly prohibited.
Also known as grabbing, graveling, stumping, or hogging, noodling is the art of wading out into the water and probing underwater hiding holes with your bare hand to coax an angry catfish to attack. Adept noodlers grab the fish and swiftly brings it to the surface without the need for a hook, rod, or line. This primal fishing method puts anglers in a direct fight with a giant fish that can leave fishers tired, bruised, and bleeding. Noodling was particularly popular during the Great Depression, as it enabled struggling families to put food on the table.
6. Fishing with Cormorants
Fishing with cormorants has been a Chinese practice for thousands of years. The cormorant is a relatively tame seabird around the same size as a Canadian goose. Cormorant fishers have up to 10 birds hovering on bamboo poles around their boats. When the time comes, the birds dive into the water for fish. To stop the birds from eating the fish, fishers place a ring around the birds’ necks so they can’t swallow. This ring is removed periodically to reward the cormorants, incentivizing them to keep corralling the fish into the nets.
7. Ice Fishing with Music
In certain regions of Russia, anglers use music to capture fish in the colder winter months.
After making a hole in the icy surface of a frozen pond or lake, they lower a fir pale into the water, beating the dry end in a consistent, rhythmic fashion. The sound lures fish into waiting nets.
8. Soda Can Method
Believe it or not, it is perfectly possible to land a fish using a humble aluminum soda can. A popular technique throughout Latin America and Asia, the practice is surprisingly effective with a little practice.
The soda can serves as a primitive spinning spool. The angler simply ties a piece of braided line or monofilament around the can, cinching it up using an arbor or similar knot, and wrapping several feet of line around the can. The angler adds a hook, bait, and sinker to the other end, then casts the can and waits.