Fishing methods
How fishing is actually done. Each method here explains the mechanics, what the method is for, the conditions it suits, and the handful of specific mistakes that separate somebody who has read about it from somebody who can use it.
What kind of fishing are you doing?
A method belongs to one or more disciplines, and this is those disciplines collapsed to the choices a reader is actually making. Several methods appear in more than one group, which is true of the fishing rather than a fault in the filing.
Sea fishing from the shore and from a boat
Salt water with a rod: the beach, the rock, the pier, the wreck and the drift.
Lure fishing
Fishing something artificial and making it behave like something alive. Fresh water and salt.
Coarse and carp fishing
Still waters, rivers and canals for non-game species, where the bait, the feed and the rig do most of the work.
Fly fishing
Casting the line rather than the lure, in fresh water and increasingly in salt.
Spearfishing on a breath
Hunting underwater without air. The techniques differ by how the diver approaches the fish, and every one of them is bounded by the same safety posture.
Gathering, netting and other ways of taking fish
Hands, nets, traps and lines without rods — some of it recreational, some of it covered for understanding rather than as instruction.
Methods that are their own thing
Each of these belongs to a discipline FishingHQ does not hold as a record, or to no discipline at all. They are here rather than filed somewhere convenient.
Aspetto (waiting)
Descending, settling on the bottom and waiting for fish to come to you — the technique that produces most of the large fish taken by shore divers.Big-game fishing
Fishing offshore for the largest fish in the sea with tackle rated by line class — a formalised, rule-bound discipline as much as a technique.Boat diving
Spearfishing from a vessel, which removes the swim and adds the two things most likely to kill a diver: propellers and drift.Cast netting
A weighted circular net thrown by hand so that it opens flat and sinks over a shoal. Ancient, worldwide, and the source of most live bait in most warm-water fisheries.Crab snaring
Catching crabs at range from a surf beach with a weighted, baited device cast on a fishing rod — the only crab method that is genuinely rod-and-line fishing.Crabbing with a line and a drop net
The commonest introduction to fishing anywhere with a harbour wall: a weighted bait that a crab grips, or a baited net it walks into — and no hook in either.Darkhouse spearing
A hole in the ice, a blacked-out shelter over it, a hand-carved decoy worked below, and a spear. A regional winter tradition of the upper Midwest and the Nordic countries, and one of the oldest continuously practised fishing methods in the northern world.Deadbaiting
Presenting a dead fish as bait for predators — a method that works because scavenging is normal predator behaviour, not an exception.Deep-drop fishing
Fishing baits several hundred metres down with heavy weights and, usually, an electric reel — a method defined entirely by what depth does to everything else.Digging and raking for shellfish
Working sand and mud at low water for the animals living inside it — the counterpart to picking rock, with a completely different safety model, because everything taken this way is a filter feeder.Drift fishing
Letting the boat move with tide and wind while fishing, so the tackle searches ground instead of waiting on it — and the decision that determines whether a boat session works at all.Drop shotting
A finesse rig with the weight below the hook, letting a small soft plastic be worked in place, off the bottom, without moving anywhere.Dry fly fishing
Presenting a floating artificial to a fish feeding at the surface, so that it drifts exactly as a natural insect would.Eging
Jigging for squid and cuttlefish with a barbed, weighted lure worked in lifts and pauses — a Japanese discipline with its own tackle, vocabulary and competitive scene.Feathering and multi-lure traces
A string of small lures on droppers, worked in the water column — how most people in Britain and Ireland catch their first sea fish, and the method most likely to catch far more than anybody intended.Feeder fishing
Legering with a weight that also carries bait, so that free offerings arrive in exactly the same place as the hookbait, cast after cast.Float fishing
Suspending a bait at a controlled depth beneath a buoyant indicator — the most visual, most controllable and most widely applicable method in angling.Float-tube fishing
Fishing from an inflated seat with your legs in the water, propelled by fins. The smallest craft in fishing, the quietest, and the one where the angler is genuinely immersed rather than aboard.Freediving for lobster
Hunting lobster on breath-hold by reaching into holes — a mainstream summer activity in several parts of the world, and one of the more dangerous positions in the sport.Gathering winkles, whelks and limpets
The oldest and least written-about way of taking food from the shore: picking sea snails off rock at low water, with no gear, no licence in most places and a genuine set of consequences.Gigging
Wading shallow water at night with a light and a short spear, taking flatfish that lie buried and still. It works because the animal's defence is to not move.Hole hunting
Searching caves, cracks, overhangs and undercuts for the fish that live in them — highly productive, and the technique with the least margin when something goes wrong.Ice fishing
Fishing through a hole cut in ice — a normal winter method across northern Europe and North America, and one where the ice itself is the principal hazard.Jigging
Working a weighted lure with a rising-and-falling motion, usually vertically, so it behaves like a wounded or fleeing baitfish.Kayak fishing
A platform rather than a technique: quiet, shallow-draught access to water no other craft reaches, bought at the price of exposure, and a discipline where the decision not to launch is part of the skill.Kite fishing
Using a kite to carry a bait away from the boat and hold it struggling at the surface — an ancient Pacific method and a modern big-game one, arrived at twice.Ledgering
Fishing a bait on the bottom held by a weight, with no float — the simplest way to fish at distance, in depth, or in wind.Light rock fishing
Ultralight lure fishing from the shore with tackle rated in single grams — a discipline that catches the fish everybody else steps over, and one FishingHQ held every component of and had never named.Livebaiting
Presenting a living fish as bait for predators — effective, and the most heavily restricted and most ethically contested method in freshwater angling.Livebaiting at sea
Presenting a living fish where a predator will find it — the most effective method for many species and the one with the clearest welfare questions attached.Nymphing
Fishing sunk imitations of immature insects at the fish's depth — the most productive fly method, and the one where take detection is everything.Pole fishing
Fishing with a long jointed pole and a short fixed line, giving bait placement precision no rod and reel can match.Popping and stickbaiting
Casting a large surface lure at reef structure and working it hard enough that a predator comes up from depth to kill it.Prawn push-netting
A beam-framed net pushed ahead of a wader over shallow sand, disturbing shrimp and prawns off the bottom and into the mouth — one of the oldest shore practices in northern Europe.Recreational potting
A baited trap an animal enters and cannot leave. Simple, effective, and among the most tightly regulated things a recreational fisher can do — because a pot keeps working whether or not anybody comes back for it.Reef spearfishing
Hunting the most species-rich environment there is, where identification matters more than technique and the substrate is a living animal.Salmon fly fishing
Swinging a fly across a river on a tight line for a fish that has stopped eating — the method behind almost all Atlantic salmon fishing, and the one where fly speed and depth matter more than what the fly resembles.Saltwater fly fishing
Fly fishing adapted to the sea: heavier lines, corrosion-proof tackle, fish that run rather than fight, and wind as the permanent constraint.Shore diving
Entering and leaving the water from land under your own power — the most accessible spearfishing and the one where the entry and exit are the dangerous part.Spinning
Casting an artificial lure and retrieving it so that it moves like something alive — the most direct form of lure fishing.Stalking
Moving quietly over ground to find fish rather than waiting for them — the technique that covers water, and the one that costs the most oxygen for the least return if done badly.Stillwater fly fishing
Fly fishing without current, where the angler supplies every movement and the problem becomes finding fish rather than presenting to them.Surface fishing for coarse fish
Fishing a floating bait on or just under the surface, where the fish can be seen taking it — the most visual freshwater fishing there is, and the one where a mistake is most obvious.Surfcasting
Casting heavy baited tackle from a beach into surf — a method defined by distance, by tide, and by reading water that all looks the same.Tenkara
A long rod, a fixed line, one fly and no reel — a Japanese mountain-stream method whose whole design argument is that removing equipment removes problems.Tomozuri
A Japanese river method that catches a fish by using another fish of the same species to make it angry. There is nothing else quite like it, and it exists because of one specific behaviour of one specific animal.Trolling
Towing lures or baits behind a moving boat to cover large volumes of water and locate scattered fish.Trotting
Running a float downstream at the speed of the current, with the line controlled by hand and the bait travelling as a loose item of food would — the oldest way of fishing a river and still the most effective in many of them.Whelk potting
Baited pots set on soft ground for an animal that finds them by smell — a fishery that works entirely because whelks track a scent plume across the seabed.
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