Fishing: Lines, Traps, Spears & What You Can Eat

One person holding one pole is a pastime. Many baited hooks in the water is a food system. FM 3-05.70 treats setlines and stakeouts as the survival default for a reason.

Cordage (thinnest strong line you can make)

1. Inner strands of parachute cord or bank line — best if you have them. One 550 cord yields many fishing lines.
2. Unravelled clothing, dental floss, sewing thread, snare wire — floss and thread are excellent for small fish.
3. Plant fibre — inner bark of basswood, cedar, willow, or nettle, reverse-wrapped. Fine for setlines; test before you trust a big fish.
4. Sinew, horsehair, rawhide thong — soak hide so it does not stiffen into a snap-off.

Keep spare line dry and coiled. Sun and grit weaken fibre fast. See the Knots & Cordage guide for reverse-wrap and hitches.

Hooks you can make

• Bent metal — pins, needles, paperclips, small nails, wire, pop-can tabs. Sharpen the point on a stone. A slight barb (nick with a knife) helps, but a sharp plain point still catches.
• Thorn / spine hook — hawthorn, black locust, cactus spine, or fish spine lashed to a shank. Use on small baitfish and panfish.
• Bone or shell — carve a point and a line notch. Stronger than wood if you have time.
• Wooden two-piece hook — a short hardwood shank and a separate point lashed at an angle (FM 21-76 method). Size the shank about 2.5 cm for small fish; scale up for bigger bait.
• Gorge hook — a straight sliver of bone, hardwood, or thorn, pointed both ends, baited in the middle, tied at the centre. The fish swallows it; a steady pull turns it sideways in the gullet. Use on fish that gulp bait. Do not yank.

Small hooks catch more meals. Survival fishing is panfish, not trophies. A hook that fits in a minnow’s mouth will also take a larger fish if the line holds.

Tie-on, weight, float

• Line to hook: improved clinch, snell, or a simple round turn and two half hitches if your hands are cold. Wet the knot, snug it, trim the tag.
• Weight: a stone with a natural waist, a nut, clay baked hard, or a scrap of metal. Keep bait near the bottom for catfish, carp, and night feeders; mid-depth for many still-water fish.
• Float: cork, bark, a feather, a bottle cap. Tells you a fish is there so you do not yank too soon.
• Leader: a short length of finer or wire line if pike, barracuda, or eels will bite through fibre.

Bait and lures (use what the fish already eat)

Match bait size to the fish you actually see. A huge gob on a tiny hook feeds crayfish, not you.

Setline / trotline (do this even if you also hand-fish)

1. Stretch a mainline between two banks, along a fallen tree, or from shore to a weighted end in deeper water.
2. Tie droppers (short side lines) every arm’s length so hooks cannot tangle each other.
3. Bait every hook. Stagger depths if you do not know where they are feeding.
4. Mark both ends so you can find the line in low light. Check at dawn, midday if hot (spoilage), and dusk.
5. A stakeout (FM method): drive two springy saplings into the bottom with tops just under the surface, cord between them, droppers hanging. Harder for people and animals to spot; still check it.

Ten mediocre hooks beat one perfect cast. If you only have one hook, still set it overnight on a forked stick and make more hooks at first light.

Traps are how people who stay in one place eat. FAO small-scale trap manuals and Army field manuals agree on the same shape: a funnel that is easy to swim into and hard to swim out of, sitting on a path fish already use.

Bottle / can funnel (hours, not days)

1. Cut the top off a plastic bottle or similar tapering container.
2. Invert the top into the body so the neck points inward. Lash or pin it so it cannot pop out.
3. Bait the chamber (guts, crushed insects, bread). Weight it so it lies on the bottom or hangs in the feeding zone.
4. Leave a small drain so it does not float. Mark the spot.
5. Use the same idea with a tin can: inward funnel of mesh, bark, or woven grass.

This takes minnows, crayfish, and small fish — which are food and bait.

Stick / basket funnel

1. Cut many finger-thick sticks of similar length.
2. Lash them into a cone or cylinder. Leave a fish-sized hole at the wide end.
3. Build an inner funnel of shorter sticks pointing in, gap just wide enough for the target fish.
4. Close the tail with a removable plug so you can dump the catch without destroying the trap.
5. Bait, weight, and set on the bottom with the mouth facing downstream in a current (fish moving upstream swim in) or along a shore path in still water / incoming tide.

Woven vine, wire mesh, or a wooden crate with a funnel works the same way. Smooth the inner funnel so fish do not snag and reverse.

Stone or stake weir

A weir is a fence that herds fish into a kill pocket. Build it where the channel already narrows.

• V-weir in a stream: two walls of stone or driven stakes that meet in a point. Put the catch basket or a small gap-and-trap at the point. In flowing water, the open mouth of the V faces downstream so fish swimming upstream enter the funnel (FM 21-76).
• Do not dam the whole river unless you must. Leave a bypass so you do not kill the water with stagnant sewage and so fish still move. You need this water tomorrow.
• Tide weir: a low stone wall in a gutter that floods at high tide. Fish come in; as the tide drops they cannot leave. Close any gap at the turn of the tide. Harvest on the next low. This is one of the oldest coastal methods and it still works.

Pots for crayfish, crabs, eels

• Baited box or cage with a one-way entrance, set on the bottom near rocks, weed, or a bank hole.
• Crayfish: bait with dead fish or guts; set at dusk; lift at dawn. They walk in; they do not always swim out.
• Check pots. An eel or crab left dead in a warm trap is not food.

Field manuals list plant-derived fish stuns (e.g. some Derris / cubé / local saponin plants). They are indiscriminate, often illegal in peacetime, and they can ruin a small pond. Do not invent a recipe. If a named manual for your region describes a plant, that is still a last move after lines and traps, and you must not use it in water you will drink or in a catchment you cannot afford to kill.

Active methods fill the pot when water is clear and shallow. They fail in flood-mud and they fail if you splash.

Spear / gig

1. Straight hardwood shaft, fire-hardened point. Better: a barbed point of bone, antler, or scrap metal lashed in a split end with wet rawhide or cord (it tightens as it dries).
2. Three-prong gig — three points spread a hand’s width. Forgives a miss on small fish. This is the tool for shallows.
3. Stand still until the fish ignores you. Strike below the fish you see — water bends light (refraction). Aim at the belly line, not the back you think you see.
4. Thrust, do not fling, unless a recovery cord is on the shaft. Deep water swallows gear.
5. Night: a torch or headlamp over shallows can freeze fish long enough for a gig. One person lights, one strikes. Watch your footing.

Nets (improvised)

• Shirt or bag dip-net: sew or tie the hem shut, hold the collar open with a forked stick. Scoop in shallows, against a weir gap, or under a light at night.
• Gill net: a wall of mesh hung across a channel or along a drop-off. Mesh about two fingers wide for panfish; larger mesh for larger fish (small fish swim through). Set at dusk, lift at dawn. Tending is not optional — turtles, otters, and rotting fish will find it.
• Seine with two people: a sheet, tarp, or woven net walked in a U toward the bank. Keep the lead edge on the bottom.

Hands and other last methods

• Tickling / feeling under banks in small clear streams — slow fingers along the belly, then grip the gills. Works on trout in tight water. You will get bitten and cut. Not a winter sport.
• Noodling catfish in holes is how people lose fingers to snapping turtle and snake. Do not put a bare hand in a hole you have not probed with a stick.
• Stunning in a tiny isolated pool: a controlled rock strike in a leftover tide pool or desert tinaja can kill trapped fish. Do not “dynamite” a river with rocks — you wreck the bed and catch nothing.

Most freshwater fish with ordinary scales or known catfish/eel bodies are edible if they were alive when you took them and you cook them through. This is not a licence to eat every animal in the ocean. Toxins are the trap: some are not destroyed by heat, and you cannot taste them in time.

Freshwater — the practical pantry

• Scaled fish (trout, perch, sunfish, pike, carp, suckers, bass): scale or skin, gut, cook. Carp and suckers are bony; steam or pressure-cook and eat off the bones, or mince cooked flesh off the skeleton. Bony is not poisonous.
• Catfish and bullheads: skin them (cut around the neck, peel toward the tail with pliers or a dry cloth). Watch the dorsal and pectoral spines — they puncture and infect. Cook through.
• Eels: edible. Kill, skin, gut, cook well. They spoil fast and they bite.
• Sturgeon, large old predators: food if legal/safe in your water, but they concentrate contaminants. Do not live on them.

Saltwater — extra toxin rules

• Ciguatera (CDC): toxins from reef algae accumulate up the food chain. They do not change taste, smell, or look, and cooking does not destroy them. Highest risk: large tropical reef predators — barracuda, moray eel, large grouper, amberjack, large snapper, sea bass. Prefer small fish from that water. Skip the head, guts, liver, and roe of reef fish. Symptoms (hours later): gut illness plus strange nerve signs (hot/cold reversal, tingling). There is no field antidote. Do not eat more fish, alcohol, or nuts hoping it “clears.” Rest, sip safe water, treat it as a medical emergency if breathing or heartbeat goes wrong.
• Scombroid / histamine (FDA/CDC): tuna, mackerel, mahi-mahi, amberjack, sardines, bluefish left warm after death. Bacteria make histamine. The fish may taste peppery or sharp. Cooking, smoking, and salting do not destroy the toxin. Flush of face, rash, burning mouth, headache, gut upset — often within an hour. Prevention is the only field control: kill, bleed, gut, and cool in shade/water/ice immediately.
• Pufferfish: tetrodotoxin, high fatality, not destroyed by cooking or freezing. FDA treats them as adulterated food for a reason. If you cannot positively rule it out, it is not food.
• Mercury: FDA/EPA — shark, swordfish, king mackerel, tilefish, bigeye tuna sit at the top. Fine as a rare meal; a daily staple for months is a slow poisoning, especially for children and pregnancy. Rotate to smaller species.

Parasites: freshwater and saltwater fish can carry worms (including Anisakis and tapeworms). Survival rule is simple and matches FDA/FoodSafety.gov: do not eat raw or undercooked wild fish. Cook until the flesh is no longer translucent and flakes, or to 63 °C / 145 °F in the thickest part if you have a thermometer. Freezing hard enough to kill parasites is a commercial control, not a camp default.

Water protein is not only finfish. Shellfish will feed you — and they are the fastest way to earn paralytic or amnesic shellfish poisoning if you harvest during a bloom.

Crayfish, shrimp, crabs, lobsters

• Take them alive. FDA: crabs and lobsters spoil fast after death; cook from live. Same rule for crayfish in the field.
• Baited traps, lift nets, and turning rocks in riffles. Grab behind the claws / behind the carapace.
• Twist the tail off crayfish if you must reduce bulk; cook the tails. Boil or roast until the meat is pearly and opaque.
• Avoid animals from foul, sewage, or bloom water even if they look fine. Filter feeders and bottom walkers concentrate filth.

Bivalves — mussels, clams, oysters, cockles

1. Harvest only live ones. Shells closed, or they close when you tap them. Throw away gapers that do not respond.
2. Rinse grit in cleanest water you have. Do not soak them in the polluted water you pulled them from if you can help it.
3. Cook until shells open. FoodSafety.gov: discard any that stay shut after cooking.
4. Never eat raw in survival. Vibrio, hepatitis, sewage — one meal can end your group’s water discipline with diarrhoea.

Snails, limpets, urchins, other

• Marine limpets and many shore snails: pry at low tide, boil or roast. Avoid cone snails — venomous, can kill. If the shell looks like a cone with a pretty pattern and a slit, do not handle it.
• Freshwater snails: can carry flukes and other parasites. If you eat them at all, boil hard and long. In schistosomiasis country, treat the water and the snails as a disease vector first.
• Sea urchins: edible roe in many species; spines puncture. Only if you know the local urchin is eaten.
• Octopus / squid: food if you can identify them. Blue-ringed octopus is lethal. Small, brown, blue rings when alarmed — do not touch.

Frogs, turtles (water-edge protein)

• Frogs: many are edible cooked; do not eat brightly coloured tropical frogs (poison). Skin some species; cook thoroughly. Take only what you will eat.
• Turtles: meat is food; cook thoroughly (Salmonella). Bite force and snapping turtles are a hand injury. Do not wipe out a breeding population at your only pond.

If you cannot identify it, it is not a meal. “Looks like a clam” during a red tide is how people stop breathing.

The catch is not food until it is dead, gutted, cooked, and either eaten or dried. Heat and time are the enemies. WHO’s five keys still apply in a creek: keep clean, separate raw from cooked, cook through, keep it out of the danger zone, use safe water.

From hook to fire

1. Kill quickly — a firm blow to the head, or ikejime-style spike if you know it. A thrashing fish on a hot bank bruises and spoils faster.
2. Bleed if you can — cut the throat or gill isthmus. Clearer meat, slower spoilage.
3. Gut immediately — slit from anal vent to the chin, pull guts and the dark kidney line along the spine. Get the guts out before they sour the flesh. Do this in the shade.
4. Remove gills on anything you will keep more than an hour.
5. Scale or skin. Scales: scrape tail-to-head with a knife back. Catfish/eels: skin. Small fish can cook whole after gutting (scales on is fine if you peel them at the plate).
6. Rinse with the cleanest water you have — boiled/treated if possible. Do not rinse in sewage-slow water and then call it clean.
7. Cook the same day unless you can ice, cold-running-stream-pot (in a sealed container), or start drying/smoking at once.

Cook until it is done — not “pink in the middle”

Field cooking that actually works

• Spit / stick roast: split fish, skewer, hold off the flame (coals, not a sooty blaze). Good for small trout and panfish.
• Wrap in leaves / clay / foil: wet leaves around a gutted fish, bury in coals. Avoid unknown toxic leaves against the meat.
• Boil / stew: safest when you doubt parasites. Heads and frames make broth — calories you would throw away.
• Fry in a pan or on a flat stone: works. Do not use a stone pulled from a creek if it might explode from trapped water — dry it first.
• Smoke and dry: thin strips in the smoke of a low fire, or sun-dry in dry climates under mesh. This is preservation, not a raw-cure you can trust against parasites on its own in damp weather. Use the Food Preservation guide.

What to do with guts

• Bait the next trap. That is their job.
• Do not dump them in your drinking pool or on the camp path (flies, bears, dogs, people).
• Roe (eggs) of many fish is food when the species is known and the water is clean; skip roe of unknown reef fish (toxin concentrates). Liver of large predators can concentrate vitamin A and contaminants — not a daily organ-meat in survival.

Fishing feels safe because it is quiet. The body count is still drowning, infection, and toxins.

Mistakes that waste a week of food

• One hook, all day, while a weir site sits unused
• Leaving a gill net overnight in warm water and calling the stink “maybe still good”
• Eating the first unidentified puffer or a big barracuda because it was “too much meat to waste”
• Testing shellfish during a bloom by eating a little
• Rinsing guts in the drinking pool
• Throwing frames away instead of boiling broth
• Spearing in murk and losing the only point
• Wading alone in current with no float and no person on the bank