Eging

Method · Last reviewed 2026-08-12

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.

Safety: cliffs and rock platforms — can cause serious injury or death. 3 more points apply here.

What each one does, and what reduces it ↓

Eging is fishing for squid and cuttlefish with an egi: a shrimp-shaped lure carrying a weighted keel and, at the rear, an upward-facing crown of fine barbless spines. It is not a variant of lure fishing for fish, and treating it as one produces a page that gets the mechanism wrong.

The mechanism is the point. A squid has no jaw a hook can hold. It seizes prey with two tentacles and pulls it back toward the beak, so the terminal tackle does not need to penetrate anything — it needs to give the tentacles something to foul on. The crown of spines does that, and it works because the animal itself supplies the pull. The spines are barbless by design, which is why an unwanted squid can be returned undamaged and why a hooked one comes off if the line goes slack.

The retrieve follows from the same fact. An egi is cast, allowed to sink on a controlled descent, then lifted in a series of sharp rod movements before being allowed to fall again. Squid take on the drop, almost always, and the take is felt as weight rather than as a bite. The angler's job is to keep contact with a falling lure, which is the same skill as fishing a jig for fish and is applied to a completely different animal.

The discipline came from Japan and brought its vocabulary with it — egi, the shakuri retrieve, sizing in traditional units rather than in millimetres — and it is now practised across the Mediterranean, Atlantic Europe, Australasia and increasingly Britain and Ireland.

What it is

Fishing for squid and cuttlefish with an egi — a shrimp-shaped, weighted lure carrying an upward-facing crown of fine barbless spines at the rear instead of a hook. It is a distinct discipline rather than a variant of lure fishing for fish, with its own tackle, vocabulary and competitive scene, and it came to Europe and Australasia from Japan.

What it is for

It solves a problem no hook-based method solves: taking an animal that grips rather than bites, without injuring it, in a way that allows an unwanted one to be released undamaged. It also reaches squid over weed and mixed ground where a bottom-fished bait would be lost, because the lure is worked through the water column rather than on the bottom.

Setting it up

Match the egi size to the depth and the current rather than to the size of the squid — the sizing convention describes the lure's length and sink rate, not the fish.
Fish the lightest lure that will still reach the depth and hold contact in the tide present, and change it as the tide changes rather than once at the start.
Use a rod with a fast tip and a soft enough action to absorb lunges, because a barbless connection punishes any sudden loading.
Keep the line in contact with the lure through the whole descent. A lure falling on slack line is a take you will never know about.
Carry a drop net for anything of size. Lifting a squid up a wall on the line tears the tentacles free.

What it catches

What you fish it with

How it works

A squid has no jaw a hook can hold. It seizes prey with two extendable tentacles and draws it back toward the beak, so the terminal tackle does not need to penetrate anything — it needs to give the tentacles something to foul on. The crown of spines does exactly that, and the animal itself supplies the holding force by pulling.

The lure is cast, allowed to sink on a controlled descent with the line kept in contact, then lifted in a series of sharp rod movements before being allowed to fall again. Squid take on the drop almost without exception, and the take registers as weight appearing rather than as a bite. Because the spines are barbless, everything afterwards depends on maintaining steady tension.

Conditions

Suits clear or lightly coloured water over weed, sand and mixed inshore ground, during the seasonal inshore movement, at dusk, through the night and at first light. Does not suit bright flat midday conditions, heavy surf, or strong current. Water temperature rather than the calendar decides when the season starts, and it shifts by weeks between years and by months between latitudes.

Common mistakes

Striking. There is nothing to set, and a strike pulls the spines out of the tentacles rather than into them. Lift into the weight and keep steady pressure.
Letting the line go slack while playing one. Barbless spines rely on tension; slack loses the animal.
Retrieving on a tight, fast line so the lure never falls. Squid take on the drop, and a lure that never drops is never taken.
Lifting a squid straight up a harbour wall on the line. The weight tears the tentacles and the animal falls back; use a drop net for anything of size.
Standing in front of it when it comes over the rail. A landed squid jets water and ink accurately and will use both.

Advantages

The connection is barbless, so an unwanted or undersized animal is released genuinely undamaged.
It works over ground — weed, rock, mixed bottom — where bottom-fished baits are lost.
It is accessible: it is done from piers, walls and rock with light tackle and no boat.

Limitations

It depends entirely on maintaining tension, so it fishes badly in strong current, heavy surf or any condition where contact with a falling lure cannot be kept.
It is seasonal in the sharpest sense — outside the inshore period the animals are simply not there, and no refinement compensates.
It is largely a low-light discipline, which places most of its practice on unlit walls and rock at night.

Where people fish it

14 places FishingHQ holds name this among the ways they are fished, across 11 coasts and systems. Being named here describes what sources report, not that the method is permitted — check the local rules before you fish.

3 further coasts and systems are not listed here. Browse every place FishingHQ holds.

Why the season is autumn and winter, and why the harbour wall works

The record above describes how the jig is worked. This is the other half — when to go, and where — and it comes from the Greek angling press rather than the British, because eging reached the eastern Mediterranean earlier and the practice there is explained to a general audience in a way it is not yet in English.

THE SEASON IS DRIVEN BY TEMPERATURE, NOT BY THE CALENDAR. Squid prefer cold water. Through the summer they hold deep, below the thermocline, which is why a summer shore session finds nothing. In autumn, once the first rains begin to change the sea's temperature, they move inshore. The Greek season is given as roughly the end of October to March, with the writer recording his own first catch of the previous year on the sixth of October.

AND THEY ARRIVE AT DUSK AND LEAVE AT DAWN. The movement is from deep water into the shallows to feed, beginning as the light goes and reversing before it returns. This is the single fact that makes shore eging possible at all: an animal that is unreachable from land for eight months of the year spends the winter nights within casting range.

IT ALSO EXPLAINS THE BRITISH PATTERN EXACTLY. Every shore squid session FishingHQ has recorded on video from the Dorset, Sussex, Kent and Cornish coasts falls between mid-September and early November, and every one of them was fished after dark. Those anglers were not following a Greek article; they were following the same fish for the same reason.

THE GROUND IS MIXED, AND THE FISH MOVE ACROSS IT. Squid choose mixed bottoms and shift readily between sand and rock, which is why they are taken from harbours, from headlands, from lit spots and from dark ones. What concentrates them is food: they come inshore to spawn and to feed, and they follow the shoals of small fish, which gather under lights.

SO THE OUTER WALL OF A LIT MARINA IS A RELIABLE STARTING POINT, and the harbour mouth is the part of it to fish first. A headland with deep water alongside is the alternative and, in the writer's own preference, the better one — for the quiet as much as for the fish — at the cost of losing jigs on rock, which is why the advice is to look at the ground in daylight before fishing it in the dark.

AND THERE IS A TEST A READER CAN APPLY ON ARRIVAL. Look at the dock for INK MARKS. Squid ink when they are lifted, the stains sit on the concrete for days, and their presence means somebody fished here recently and caught something. Their absence, on a wall that looks perfect, is worth taking seriously.

THE CUTTLEFISH ARE A DIFFERENT SEASON ON THE SAME LURE. They take an egi readily but chiefly at the end of winter and the beginning of spring, and they want a slower retrieve worked low on the bottom rather than the sharp lifts that move a squid. One jig, two animals, two times of year and two ways of fishing it.

What experienced anglers do — why, and the sources (2)

Widely and independently recommended by experienced anglers and specialist sources. This is real angling knowledge, not proof: controlled evidence for it is limited, and FishingHQ records it as convention rather than as a demonstrated effect.

Boat & Fishing: Egi Fishing — ψάρεμα καλαμαριών από ακτή (shore eging for squid) — Boat & Fishing (Greece), 2018 (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: A Greek angling magazine's shore-eging feature, giving the season, the mechanism that drives it and the ground it is fished over.Passage read and verified
Public fishing video with an explicitly stated location — Various public video platforms (Practitioner report)Relied on for: Six independent British publishers filming a shore squid session between mid-September and early November, three of them stating it was the first or second session of that year's run — the pattern the Greek mechanism predicts, from anglers who had not read it.Citation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

What the number on an egi box means, and why it is not the weight

Squid jigs are sold by a number between about 1.6 and 3.5, and a reader who assumes it is a weight in grams will buy the wrong lure.

IT IS THE LENGTH IN INCHES. The sizes most used in Greece are the 2.5 and the 3.0, which are roughly nine and ten and a half centimetres. Manufacturers differ in whether they measure to the tip of the barbs or only the body, so the figure is a size class rather than a dimension to trust to the millimetre.

THE OTHER NUMBER ON THE BOX IS THE SINK RATE, in seconds per metre — three seconds per metre, say. This is the useful one and it is the one most readers ignore. Counting the seconds after the cast tells you the depth the jig is at when you begin working it, which is the whole of depth control in this method.

SO THE CHOICE IS MADE BY THE WATER RATHER THAN BY PREFERENCE. A slow sinker of seven to nine seconds per metre fishes shallow ground for longer and therefore better. A fast sinker is what works in depth or in a run of current, where a slow one is swept so far off line that the retrieve is meaningless before it has begun.

COLOUR IS LESS SETTLED AND THE SOURCES SAY SO. Pink, orange and green are the colours Greek anglers trust most; blue, red, purple and natural finishes all work, and the naturals are specifically rated in lit places such as harbours. The practical advice is not a colour but a habit: when the squid are not taking, change the jig at intervals until you find the one they want. When a shoal first arrives inshore they will take almost anything, and it is when they turn hesitant that the searching starts.

THE REST OF THE OUTFIT IS LIGHT. A spinning rod of eight to nine feet with a casting weight well under thirty grams — five to twenty is given as an example — parabolic with a fast action, so that the movement reaches the jig instantly and the tip is still soft enough not to tear the squid off the barbs on the way in. A small reel, fifteen hundred to three thousand, with a shallow spool and a drag set slightly loose. Fine braid, PE 0.5 to 1.5, because monofilament stretches too much to transmit the action at all — and about eighty centimetres of fluorocarbon around 0.20 millimetres as a leader.

AND A LANDING NET IS NOT OPTIONAL FOR A LARGE ONE. A big squid takes drag like a fish rather than hanging on the jig like a bag, and lifting one that is still fresh is how it comes off. The netting stroke has to cut off its retreat rather than chase it, which is easier described than done in the dark.

Reported, not established — why, and the sources (1)

Reported, but without independent support. Recorded because it is in circulation, not because it has been shown to hold.

Boat & Fishing: Egi Fishing — the tackle and the egi itself — Boat & Fishing (Greece), 2018 (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: The equipment half of the same feature: the rod, reel, line and leader, and the egi's sizing and sink-rate conventions.Passage read and verified

The same animal from a boat is not the same method

Everything above is shore eging: one weighted jig, cast, worked in lifts and pauses through shallow water, from late October to March, at dusk and after dark, with the jig chosen by its sink rate.

THE GREEK BOAT FISHERY SHARES THE ANIMAL AND ALMOST NOTHING ELSE.

THE GEAR IS A DROPPER TRACE, not a single lure. Three to five artificial squid lures — sometimes more — are spaced along the line above a pear lead on a swivel, and the whole trace is worked vertically by raising and lowering the rod while the boat drifts, so that the lures move as if alive. That is a paternoster fished on the drop, and it has more in common with feathering for mackerel than with casting an egi.

THE DEPTH IS THE OTHER WORLD. The session the Greek press describes is fished in eighty to ninety metres over dense weed. No shore method reaches that, and it is why the boat fishery can run while the shore one is waiting for the fish to come in.

THE SEASON IS SHORTER AT BOTH ENDS: October to early February, against late October to March from the shore. Fished at night with moonlight, at dawn, or at dusk.

AND THE COLOUR RULE IS DIFFERENT because the light is. Fluorescent colours at night; bright red, green or orange by day. Shore eging in Greece is a night fishery and the colour question barely arises.

WHERE THEY GATHER. Heads with weed on them, channels, water near foam, and the deeper ground where the small fish squid hunt collect. That last one is the same rule as the lit marina wall on the shore side — find the bait, find the squid — arriving at a completely different piece of ground.

How you know it is a big one before you see it

A large squid announces itself on the line in a way that has nothing to do with fighting.

IT OPENS LIKE AN UMBRELLA AS IT COMES UP. Arms and tentacles spread against the water, so what reaches the rod is a broad, heavy, spread resistance rather than a run — closer to the feel of a snag that is slowly moving than to a fish.

THEN IT CONTRACTS AND JETS AT THE SURFACE. That is the moment the hooks come out if the drag is wrong.

WHICH IS WHY THE RETRIEVE IS STEADY AND THE DRAG IS SET SOFT. There are no barbs holding a squid the way a hook holds a fish — the jig's crown grips the arms — and a hard pull against a spread animal tears the tentacles rather than moving it. A squid over a kilo is genuinely hard work to bring up by hand from that depth.

NONE OF THIS IS A SIZE RULE. It is how a practitioner tells a good animal from a bad snag while it is still forty metres down, and it is the sort of thing that only ever appears in writing by somebody who has done it.

The eging retrieve: why the squid takes on the fall and not on the lift

Lure action · Draft — not yet checked against an external reference

This drawing has not been checked against any reference outside FishingHQ. It is a schematic of what the surrounding text describes, and the text is what carries the detail.

Describe this diagram in words

The path of a single squid jig through the water during one retrieve, seen from the side, with time running left to right and depth increasing downward. Neither axis carries a scale. After the cast the jig sinks in a controlled descent with the line kept in contact. It is then worked upward in a short series of sharp rod strokes, each a small rise followed by a small drop, so the lure darts. The strokes stop and the jig falls back on a tight line over a long slope — and this is the productive part of the cycle, because squid take on the drop almost without exception. A second sequence of strokes and a second fall follow, and on the second fall the squid takes: an arrow shows it reaching from below and behind with its tentacles and drawing the jig back toward its beak, which is where the holding force comes from, since the jig's crown of fine spines does not penetrate anything. The take registers as weight appearing on a lure that should have been getting lighter. The recovery is drawn as one smooth, unbroken rise under steady tension, because the spines are barbless and a slack line loses the animal.

How this drawing was produced

Drawn in-repository as structured elements rather than as free SVG, using the standing visual vocabulary. Reviewed for internal consistency: the path is continuous from cast to recovery with each segment starting where the previous one ended, the two fall segments are the only descending runs after the initial descent, and the take is marked on a fall rather than on a lift. No depth, pause length or stroke count is drawn, because the eging record states none. RENDERED AND LOOKED AT, and the looking is what found the defects: the first draft had four labels overlapping each other and two crossing the path itself, and a time axis along the foot that every conclusion collided with. The axis was folded into the premise line and the labels were repositioned clear of the path and of one another.

Safety

Cliffs and rock platforms — Can cause serious injury or death

Most shore eging is done at night from piers, harbour walls and rock — wet, unlit, frequently unguarded, and with everybody's attention on the water rather than on their feet.

What reduces it: Learn the mark in daylight before fishing it after dark. Carry a light and a means of calling for help, tell somebody where you are, and stay back from unguarded edges.

Precautions that always apply here

Tell somebody where you are going and when you expect to be back.
Carry a charged phone in a waterproof case, or another means of calling for help.
Check the tide before you go and know your exit route. Being cut off is the commonest way a shore session becomes a rescue.

Check the rules before you fish

Fishing laws, bylaws, access rules, seasons, bait restrictions and permitted methods vary by location and can change. Check the current rules from the relevant authority and the water you intend to fish before fishing.

Check with:

Current national or regional law for where you are fishing
Current local bylaws
The relevant fisheries authority
The landowner, club or fishery whose water it is
Any restrictions specific to the species or the method you intend to use

Where to go next

Skills behind it

Sources and evidence

General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated practice for this method, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as tested fact.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
FAO fishing gear types and fishing technology information — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Gear classification and operating principle for the net, trap or jig type described, independently of the recreational literature.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Why the 11 connections on this page are here, and the sources

What it catches

What experienced anglers do — 4 connections

European squid
The method is the established way this species is taken recreationally.
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated practice connecting this species to this method.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FAO fishing gear types and fishing technology information — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Gear classification and operating principle for the method described.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
An established fishing practice for this species, recorded as the convention it is rather than as a tested claim.
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated practice associating this discipline with this place, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as tested fact.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Fishers' Craft and Lettered Art: Tracts on Fishing from the End of the Middle Ages — University of Toronto Press, 1997 (Scientific literature)Relied on for: That fishing traditions develop around the water and fish available to them, and the historical method of reading such traditions.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Common cuttlefish
The method is the established way this species is taken recreationally.
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated practice connecting this species to this method.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FAO fishing gear types and fishing technology information — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Gear classification and operating principle for the method described.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Common octopus
A statement about how a species is taken, which is practice convention rather than biology and is labelled as such.
- BlueWater Hunting and Freediving — BlueWater Freedivers, Ventura, California, 1995 (Practitioner report)Relied on for: Reef and blue-water breath-hold hunting practice, including fish behaviour, approach, catch handling and the judgement involved in taking a shot.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated descriptions of fish behaviour and regional fishing practice, recorded as consensus rather than as scholarship.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Veined squid
A statement about how a species is fished, which is angling convention rather than biology and is labelled as such.
- Sea Angler — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Contemporary UK sea angling and shore gathering practice as reported by practitioners: ground, seasonal timing, tackle, bait and method convention.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated descriptions of technique, fish behaviour and regional practice, recorded as consensus rather than as scholarship.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

What you fish it with

What experienced anglers do — 2 connections

Palomar knot
Which knot a kind of fishing conventionally uses is established practitioner knowledge that converges across independent traditions and independent state agency guides, and it is labelled as consensus rather than as tested result. Nothing here ranks knots by strength: see `why-knot-strength-tables-disagree` for why that number does not exist.
- Angling Times — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Contemporary UK lure and predator angling practice as reported by practitioners, including braid-to-lure connections and finesse rigging.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- How to Tie Fishing Knots — uni, blood, improved blood, surgeon's and loop knots — Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation (Take Me Fishing) (Angling or fisheries organisation)Relied on for: A contemporary national angling-participation body's knot guide, covering the connections used in modern lure fishing and the materials they are tied in.States this directlyPassage read and verified
Squid jigs
The retrieve the method describes — snap the rod, then let the jig sink back on a tight line — is a description of what this lure does when it is not being pulled, and is unavailable to any other lure family.
- Plugging for squid: the art of eging — The Fisherman (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: A specialist angling feature on eging, read in full, describing the jig, the tackle and the retrieve.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: The widely restated practitioner position on squid-jig use.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

Skills behind it

What experienced anglers do — 5 connections

Fishing at night: what is different
A link from a practice, an environment or a geography to the mechanism it rests on. It asserts that the mechanism is load-bearing here rather than merely relevant, which is the test applied throughout this file.
- Sea Angler — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Long-running published description of how conditions are read in the practice named, by ground type and by region.FishingHQ's interpretation of what it saysCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated descriptions of how the condition named governs the practice named, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as scholarship.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Squid at night, and what lights actually do
A method joined to the explainer that accounts for when and where it is practised.
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated practice associating this discipline with this place, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as tested fact.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Fishers' Craft and Lettered Art: Tracts on Fishing from the End of the Middle Ages — University of Toronto Press, 1997 (Scientific literature)Relied on for: That fishing traditions develop around the water and fish available to them, and the historical method of reading such traditions.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Turbidity and visibility
Written only where the method's own conduct changes because of the condition — a different rig, depth, retrieve, or a decision to move or stop. Every condition is true of every method, so an edge that merely records that would distinguish nothing.
- Sea Angler — Bauer Media (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: British sea angling practice: how tide, wind, swell and water clarity change where and how a mark is fished.FishingHQ's interpretation of what it saysCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Freshwater Fishing — Macdonald & Jane's, 1975 (Specialist angling publication)Relied on for: Comprehensive angling practice across disciplines, including water reading, seasonal condition and the tackle each demands.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- FishBase: a global information system on fishes — Froese, R. and D. Pauly, eds. — FishBase Consortium (Scientific institute)Relied on for: Recorded environment, temperature and oxygen tolerance, depth range and behaviour of the species named.States this directlyPassage read and verified
- Freshwater Fishes of the British Isles — HarperCollins (New Naturalist 75), 1992 (Reference work)Relied on for: Life history, physiological tolerance and seasonal behaviour of European freshwater fishes.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
What squid fishing actually is
A method joined to the explainer that sets out the mechanism it depends on, which is what makes FishingHQ an explanation rather than a list.
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated practice associating this discipline with this place, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as tested fact.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Fishers' Craft and Lettered Art: Tracts on Fishing from the End of the Middle Ages — University of Toronto Press, 1997 (Scientific literature)Relied on for: That fishing traditions develop around the water and fish available to them, and the historical method of reading such traditions.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
Where squid are found inshore
A method joined to the explainer describing the ground it is practised on.
- General angling website restatements of established technique — Various (Credible secondary source)Relied on for: Widely restated practice associating this discipline with this place, recorded as practitioner consensus rather than as tested fact.Background and mechanism onlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly
- Fishers' Craft and Lettered Art: Tracts on Fishing from the End of the Middle Ages — University of Toronto Press, 1997 (Scientific literature)Relied on for: That fishing traditions develop around the water and fish available to them, and the historical method of reading such traditions.States this directlyCitation checked — the work exists and is described correctly

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