World's Strangest Fishing Techniques

[John Waldman]

To everyone who replied to my query--thanks! Some of it will be usable for my book and all of it was entertaining.

 

This thread may be played out, but if anything else occurs to anyone over the next few months, please email me directly at john@hudsonriver.org.

 

As they say in the states: "Tight Lines" (but they really mean "Taut Lines." Either way, good fishing.

 

John

[salvelinus]

There is old RTE news footage (in Ireland ) of locals chasing pike with a terrier when the lake (Carra I think, though apparently the more famous place for this activity was Loughrea) was frozen over. Once the fish tired a lump hammer was used to break the ice and or stun the fish and then the ubiqutious hay fork applied to get him out of the water. The old news footage is quite funny as plenty of old farmers break their holes on the ice.

 

A shotgun on spawning pike was not unsual on Corrib in by-gone days.

 

Some of the most ingenious methods I have witnessed were used by poachers. I saw a shopping trolley used as a trap in a weir once. You should contact the Fishery Boards in Ireland and the EA baliffs in the UK for verifyable poaching methods.

[Ken L]

I knew there was something nagging at the back of my mind.

When I was a kid, I read about the Welsh going after conger that were under the rocks at low tide with a kind of blunt gaff. I can't remember what they called the method though.

If anyone can drag a name up from their brain, it might be one for John.

[severus]

Great stories!

 

John, you mentioned hand-fishing as a topic, so here is a good article on the history of hand-lining for walleye in the Detroit river:

 

http://www.michigan-sportsman.com/fishing_...ng_walleyes.htm

 

Also, when chinook salmon stage off the port of Manistee in Lake Michigan in late summer, they enter Manistee lake before heading upstream to spawn. It's a small drowned-river mouth without much room, so the fish tend to go in circles. Fishermen in boats will toss out a spoon, leave the bail open, and wait. Eventually a fish will get the line in its open mouth, pull the spoon from the bottom, and hook itself. Naturally, the DNR frowns on that kind of fishing.

 

Good luck with your book.