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Jacob Hunter September 27, 2015
In a survival situation, do you imagine yourself using the paper clip from your
survival kit to fashion a fishing hook and catch yourself dinner? Hate to break it to
you, but that method of fishing probably isn’t going to work very well, and it certainly
isn’t going to be very efficient. But fish could still be your best source of food in a
survival situation, so long as you know how to make these fishing traps.
Methods of Fishing
Before we get into the specific ways you can make a fish trap for survival, we need
to go over the basic methods of fishing. There are many ways to fish, but they all fall
into one of these 4 groups:
If you are near a body of water with a lot of fish (where does this still exist in
America?), then the hookandbait method might work. It is also fine if you are
fishing for recreation. But, in a survival situation, I wouldn’t rely on it. This method
simply requires too much patience and luck. You might starve before you get a fish!
I’d rather eat bugs for survival.
The benefit of this approach is that you are more proactive. You can locate schools
of fish, or large fish, and go after them instead of just waiting. However, you will
probably need to have a large net and, if you don’t have a boat, you will have to get
into the water.
4. Spearing
Unless you are some wilderness survival expert, I doubt you are going to be able to
spear a fish. Again, you’d probably be better off eating bugs than wasting your time
with this. But, if you’ve got time to kill, go ahead and try it.
1. Take the label off of the bottle
2. Cut the top off the plastic bottle off
3. Poke some holes in the bottom of the plastic bottle (to allow water to flow
through it)
4. Put some stones in the bottle (to act as sink weights)
5. Invert the top of the plastic bottle and put it into the lower part of the bottle. They
should fit together snugly. You might need to cut a small slit on the top part of the
plastic bottle to get it inside.
6. Tie a handle to the bottle trap. If you don’t have cordage or string.
7. Tie the string to something like a branch, then put the trap in the water.
8. Check the trap to see if you caught any small fish.
Image credit: fish trap by Bill Bumgarner, found on Flickr. Creative Commons BY NC
ND 2.0
Seine Fishing
A seine is basically a big fishing net that you drag along a river or pond to catch fish.
This is a very effective method of fishing and it has been used for thousands of
years – including by stone age people. The obvious downside to this method of
survival fishing is that you will need a net. Hopefully you will have a lot of cordage of
even dental floss to make a net. Or, you can get really crafty and use natural
materials to make your own cord in a survival situation.
Your net needs to be fairly long (at least a couple meters) and wide. The larger the
net is, the larger of fish you will be able to get.
Tie stones (as weights) onto the bottom of the net. Tie something which floats onto
the top (this can be driftwood, closed plastic bottles, or Styrofoam you find in the
trash, for example).
You will need two people to operate the seine. One person holds onto each side of
the seine and walks through the water. Start by walking straight forward, and then
come towards each other making a C shape. It helps to have a third person to grab
any caught fish in a net.
Have you ever used any of these survival 㬀뤄sh
traps? Let us know in the comments or join the
conversation on Facebook.