Saturday, July 10, 2010

Survival Skills - Fishing - Part One



Fishing is not only a great recreational sport but it can also be a great survival skill. Unless you live in or get stuck in a desert or semi-arid region, you will probably be able to find a water source that can provide an excellent source of food if you have some basic fishing skills.

One of the basic skills when it comes to fishing is finding and using the appropriate bait. You will need something to entice those fish to bite your hook. Now you could carry a few artificial plastic worms or some simple jigs in your survival kit that could serve the same purpose but using natural forms of bait may mean the difference between catching a fish and just getting your hook wet.

Things like worms, grasshoppers and grubs make excellent bait for your hook and are generally easy to find in a survival situation. Using natural baits will usually increase your success rate of catching fish. Many times an abundance of natural food sources may make it more difficult to catch fish using artificial types of bait. Using natural food sources can make a difference in the amount of fish you may be able to catch.

Even though fishing is a great recreational activity, in a survival situation you will need to do more "catching" than fishing.

Got worms for bait?

Staying above the water line!

Riverwalker

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it's for survival get a gill net. Fits in your pocket. Make your own, if you want.

Don't need no worms.

Mountain rifleman

riverwalker said...

To: anonymous 12:45

A net is a good way to do it also...or a spear or make a fish trap. As long as you've got a net with you...you're ahead of the game.

Thanks Mountain rifleman.

RW

Anonymous said...

Grasshoppers! That's right, grasshoppers and other little bugs. If you can tie them to a hook with thread rather then put the hook through them they will be more effective. That's because they will swim or thrash about on the surface of the water attracting fish to them. Use a small hook so you don't weigh them down. A really good hook to cary with you is an "egg hook". It is tiny. But it will allow you to use a tiny piece of bait and catch small fish. Why would you want to catch small fish? Simple, because they are generally far more plentiful then larger fish and often they are the only fish available to you. My survival kit also contains a few of the largest treble hooks I can find. Tie a weight on the end of your line. Tie the treble hook about 2-3 feet up the line and put a float or bobber higher up. Use this where you can see fish in the water. Toss it out and when a fish is over the line yank sharply. This is good for fish that don't generally take bait.

riverwalker said...

To: anonymous 10:09

Grasshoppers work great! You can also use a spear on fish that are visible.

Thanks for the great tip about using the smaller hooks...this is a practice I use also and "egg hooks" are included. You can catch a big fish with a small hook but it doesn't work as well vice versa.

Thanks anon.

RW

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