Low Tech Set Line Fishing

Low tech set line fishing gear that even a child can set up.

 

That's carp isn't it? Some good size too! Little guy certainly knows what he is doing. What you think 8 years old? Strange...an American would have spent a couple hundred dollars on pole, reel, bait and tackle for the same result. LOL! Never fails to amaze and impress me how 3rd world folks can do 2X more with half as much or less.

 

Did the same thing happen 75 years ago in minn fishing for carp suckers and sheepshead. Gram baked them pickled them smoked them. Used dough balls with chicken guts etc for bait. Tied the line to a sapling and marked it with a cloth. Used a good sized hook and bank line. Checked about every 4 hours. Often had to cut hook out as they swallowed it whole.

 

The two larger fish looked like carp...not best eating fish, but when living on the poverty line, it is nutritious and would make a wholesome fish stock. The guts and bones would provide fertiliser for a produce garden.

 

Ate a lot of carp as a kid. Baked with the mud line removed they are very good. A little dry at times. Make good fish chowder, cut into fillets and smoked with apple or hickrey wood, they are very good for snacks. Ate channel catfish, bull heads, etc. Easier to catch and considered rough fish so in those days no limit. Warden checked us once and asked if fish were for the cats. Head, guts, etc were kept for garden. Kept out of compost pile, as cats and raccoons would dig them out if put into pile.

We fished for fun with rod and reel, used bamboo poles, with hook and bobber, made fish traps out of snow fence, speared them. used bank lines or trot lines. Ate a lot of "free" fish and bought salt cod and lutefisk. Pickled fish, smoked fish, salted fish,always had fish. Small boney ones can be pickled like sardines and are good treats. Good fish chowder is hard to beat as well as breaded and french fried fish. The old English fish and chips.

 

I would argue that the fishing is anything but low tech. Applied tech might be more correct.In the first video the boy is using dough balls for bait and bottom fishing for carp, suckers, etc, fish that feed off what falls to the bottom. Dough balls require wheat flour as it is dough. Flour will not stick to the hook. You have to knead it to develop the gluten in the flour. As any vegen knows, it is left after you knead the flour and wash out the starch etc and is semi waterproof as well as trapping CO2 from the yeast.. You can fry it, bake, etc as a meat substitute. It like tofu has no real flavor of its own. Thus you have to understand wheat, have wheat, know how to process it and then know how to use the dough balls.

In addition the use of the bottle on a spindle allows the fish to mouth the bait, swallow it, and not be limited in the movement as it would be if the line was tied to a tree etc. The pan with water in it is used to keep the fish alive until processed as well as storing it on the hook until "harvest" time.

Second film shows boy using dough balls, wheat based, even as he fishes in a rice growing area. He has positioned his poles in a waterway between two paddy areas and you can see he knows it. There was a support pole across the waterway and he has positioned 3 fishing poles with bobbers to catch the fish moving from one area to another. He is still, but the water is flowing to bring more fish into the area. Carp and such are welcomed, even planted, to eat bugs etc in the rice paddies. Since the fish are moving, he has to watch the bobber and set the hook as the fish is not likely to swallow the bait whole as was in the first video. Wheat has to be available as rice balls will fall apart and is not likely to be grown in a rice area.



And the final one, kid using a bambo stake, dough balls, and ball bearings for sinkers to get it to the bottom.



Well they are lead free and will not hurt the loons!