Fish and water foods

Fish are not distributed evenly. They are concentrated, predictably, wherever three things overlap: food arriving, cover to hide in, and a place to hold without swimming hard. Learn to see those and you will out-fish someone with better gear who is standing in the wrong place.

In a river, look for the seam — the visible line where fast water meets slow. Fish hold in the slow side and dart into the fast side to take what the current brings. That line is the single most productive feature in any river and it is visible from the bank.

Other reliable holds: the deep outside of a bend, undercut banks, the downstream side of any boulder or log, the tail of a pool where it shallows, and the churn below a fall. In still water: weed edges, drop-offs, inflows and any structure.

Time matters as much as place. Dawn and dusk are when most species feed. Warm shallows at first light in cool weather; deeper and shaded in heat. After rain, a rising and colouring river brings food down and fish move to the edges to take it.

This ordering is the practical heart of the guide. Work down it, not up.

The pattern to notice: everything at the top works while you are absent. That is the whole difference. A trapline of ten traps and two set lines is perhaps two hours of work a day — setting, checking, rebaiting — and fishes for twenty-four. A person with a rod fishing for two hours has fished for two hours.

Active methods still earn their place: they work where passive gear cannot be left, they take species that will not enter a trap, and they are how you eat on the day you arrive somewhere. But if you are settling anywhere for more than a week, build gear.

Netting is one skill: the same knot, repeated, at a constant size. The knot is a sheet bend, and the constant size comes from a flat gauge you loop each mesh around rather than from judging by eye. Master those two things and net making is simply patient.

You need a netting needle (a flat shuttle that holds the twine and passes through the mesh) and a mesh gauge (a flat stick whose width sets the mesh). Both are five minutes of whittling and both are what make the net regular. A net with irregular mesh fishes badly and tears at the small meshes.

Work in rows. Every mesh in a row is knotted to a loop in the row above. The net grows downward, one row at a time, and you can make it any width and any length by adding rows.

Twine: any strong, rot-resistant cordage — see Cordage. Nettle, dogbane, flax, hemp and inner bark all work. The finer and more consistent the twine, the better the net fishes, because fish see and feel a thick net.

A hook does not need a barb, a point of steel or a factory. The oldest and simplest is the gorge — a straight sliver of bone, hardwood or shell, sharpened both ends, tied at its middle and buried in bait. The fish swallows it lengthways; a pull turns it crossways and it locks behind the gill arch. Gorges are trivial to make in quantity and they work.

A true J-hook takes more skill and holds better, especially for fish you want to release or that must be landed quickly. Bone, hardwood, thorn, shell and — later — wire all work.

Set lines do the real work. A trotline is a long line across or along a water with many short droppers, each hooked and baited, anchored at both ends and left overnight. Twenty hooks fishing all night beats one hook fishing all day, and it costs you a walk at dawn.

Bait, in rough order of usefulness: worms, insect larvae and grubs, small live fish, freshwater mussels and snails, offal and fish scraps, roe. Anything you would not eat is worth trying — bait is where waste becomes protein.

Most fish in most waters are safe when cooked. But water food contains a small number of genuinely lethal traps, and — unlike most plants — several of them cannot be detected by looking, smelling, tasting or cooking. This section is the reason to read the guide rather than skim it.

The general rules that carry you a long way:

• Cook everything, thoroughly. This handles parasites and most bacteria. It does not handle the toxins below.
• Prefer small, common, ordinary-looking fish of species you see many of. Novelty is risk.
• Freshwater fish are never safe raw. Liver flukes and tapeworms are widespread and some cause serious long-term disease.
• Cool the catch fast, or gut and dry it fast. Several problems below are storage failures, not species problems.
• There is no universal test. Not the folk tests, not feeding a little to an animal, not tasting a small piece. For the heat-stable toxins, a small piece is enough to poison you.

More fish is lost to bad handling than to bad fishing. Fish spoils faster than any other meat — enzymes in the gut keep working after death, and the flesh has almost no connective tissue to slow bacteria.

Do these four things, in this order, within the hour:

1. Kill it promptly. A fish left to suffocate slowly produces worse flesh.
2. Bleed it — cut the gill arches and let it drain in water. Blood left in the flesh drives both spoilage and strong flavour.
3. Gut it, and take the gills out with the guts. This is where spoilage starts.
4. Cool it, or start drying it. Shade, moving air, a wet cloth, cold water, a pit. Whatever is coldest.

Then preserve. Small fish can be dried whole; larger fish should be split along the backbone so the thickest flesh is exposed. Salt if you have it — see Salt. Smoke if you do not: a cool, smoky fire for a day or more, until the flesh is leathery and dark. See Preserve the harvest for the general principles.

Do not stack fresh fish deep. The ones at the bottom crush, warm and spoil first, and they will spoil the whole pile.

A boat multiplies the water you can reach, lets you set and lift nets in deep water, and opens the far bank. It is also, by a wide margin, the most dangerous thing in this guide. Drowning kills far more people than the toxins above.

Build in this order — each is a real boat, and each teaches the next:

• Raft. Logs lashed together. Crude, slow, nearly unsinkable, and takes a day. Ideal for crossing and for setting nets in still water.
• Dugout. One large log hollowed by adze and controlled fire. Heavy, stable, extremely durable, and needs only one good tree and patience.
• Bark canoe. A sewn bark skin over a light frame, sealed with pitch. Light enough to carry, fast, and repairable with materials found on the bank.
• Skin boat. Hides over a frame — a coracle for still water, an umiak-type hull for a coast. Very light for their capacity.
• Plank boat. Sawn or riven planks on frames. Needs woodworking, fastenings and caulking, and it is the first hull that scales up.