Fishing Techniques

Fishing is the activity of catching fish. Fishing techniques include netting, trapping, angling and hand gathering. The term fishing may be applied to catching other aquatic animals such as different types of shellfish, squid, octopus, turtles, frogs, and some edible marine invertebrates. Fishing is not usually applied to catching aquatic mammals such as whales, where the term "whaling" is more appropriate, or to commercial fish farming. In addition to providing food through harvesting fish, modern fishing is both a recreational and professional sport.

There are many techniques for fishing. Fishermen may use hooks and fishing line and a fishing rod. Fishing nets, fish traps, and trap nets may be used to capture fish. Lobster and crab pots use a similar method. Hand fishing consists of fishing with the hands or through the use of minimal equipment. In spear fishing, the fish is killed using an ordinary spear or a specialized variant thereof. Closely related to spear fishing is bow fishing. Trained animals can assist in fishing; one notable example is Asian cormorant fishing.

Kite fishing allows the fisherman to cast far into the water, even without a boat. Dredging is sometimes used to scoop scallops or oysters from the seabed. Poisonous plants can be used to stun fish so that they become easy to collect by hand; cyanide can also be used. Other fishing techniques include electrofishing and dynamite fishing. Bottom trawling, seining, driftnetting, handlining, longlining, gillnetting and diving are widely used techniques. A recent non-traditional approach using a radio-controlled boat is called remote control fishing.