Today's excerpt begins on page 550 of The Survivor Volume 2.
By Jim & Stephanie Watters
Serious survival fishing is based on these assumptions:
- You need enough fish to feed a hungry family;
- Due to some risk factor (such as hostile survivors or unsympathetic game wardens) you don't want to spend too much time at the scene;
- Due to those same risk factors you need methods that leave no sign of your activities in the area.
These are serious problems that rule out most, conventional fishing methods.
But poor folks down here in the South have been getting around them for years.
Most of them use some type of trap.
One of the easiest traps to make is constructed from old automobile tires— one of America's most plentiful unnatural resources.
Lace the sidewalls together with wire or heavy string.
Stand the tire up and cut three or four holes into the tread about 2.5 to 3 inches across.
These will be for fish to swim into to hide or to eat the bait.
Now, directly down from the big holes you cut, gouge, several small holes into the tread, and it wouldn't hurt to gouge a few into the sidewalls if you’re not very strong.
These are to let out the water when you go to pull up your trap.
Keep them small or you'll lose the tasty crayfish that often go into the tire along with the catfish, perch, turtles, eels, and crabs.
Tie a rope or wire around the tire at the top where you cut most of your entry holes.
That way when you quickly pull up your catch, they will not be able to swim out.
Tire traps sometimes work without bait because fish use them for hiding places, but they're most effective with bait.
Spoiled left over food, rabbit guts, almost anything you can think of will work.
The worse it smells, the more action you'll get.
Set your tire traps in the bend of a creek where the water is deepest, and conceal the rope leading to it.
Try not to leave too many tracks in the soft mud and check your traps from a different approach each day.
When you clean your catch, save the guts and scraps for bail; don't leave scales on the bank.
If you can scrounge enough old wire fencing, you can make a very effective trap that I prefer to all others.
Make a cylinder of the fencing about 10 - 20 inches in diameter and three to four feet long.
(I have used bigger ones but they are hard to carry along a woods path and require much deeper water for complete concealment).
Over this cylinder of heavy fencing wrap some small mesh stuff like that used for chicken coops or rabbit hutches.
Close up one end of your cylinder completely.
Next, make a funnel of the small mesh wire and fasten it into the other end.
I have an opening in the end of the cone of 2.5-3" diameter.
Now to get your fish out more easily, cut a flap in the small mesh wire somewhere on the side of the cylinder, and cut out one mesh in the heavy form fencing beneath it.
Tie it shut with three or four pieces of soft copper wire.
Tie a rope or wire (which is easier to conceal) to your basket trap and head for the water with some good stinking bait tied up in an old sock or even table scraps in a paper sack so they won't wash away too quickly).
Follow same directions as with tire traps.
Basket traps are also very effective when placed in culverts or drainage pipes or any narrow place in a creek or canal.
We sometimes catch muskrats in them.
If you want more rats than fish, use apples and cattail roots for bait, and make your funnel opening a little larger.
Or you can catch big snapping turtles by using a bigger funnel and a bloody bait.
The muskrats are very good eating if you remove the musk glands in their hind legs.
Their fur is soft and very long wearing.
The snappers are good eating; all turtles are edible, but the snapper is especially good.
You can expect to catch all kinds of turtles in a basket trap.
I don't recommend stink turtles or horse turtles, but the others aren't bad if you stew them.
If you can't find the fencing to make the cylinder for a big basket trap, you can make a box frame trap of wood and cover it with any small mesh wire— the smaller, the better.
Instead of a funnel opening, make it like an inverted pyramid.
These traps work well, too, and are easier to conceal in shallow ponds.
If you're living out of your backpacks and can't scrounge any tires or fencing for traps, you can still get plenty of fish for your family.
Find a black walnut tree and pick up a sackful or a shirtful of walnuts with the husk still on the nutshell.
Pound them up, tie them into your shirt or bag and with the line attached, throw into a pond or slow moving stream.
In just five minutes you'll be able to pick up fish coming to the surface.
You can use the mashed up berries and leaves from a chinaberry tree also.
It's very common around old homesteads here in the south.
I've also heard that crushed poke salad roots and berries will work but I've never tried them because I know they're poisonous to people too.
Whatever you use, when you get enough fish, pull out the bag or you will destroy all the fish there, and that's stupid.
There are other methods of serious survival fishing, but these are the ones I'm best acquainted with because they are best suited for my area.
In your retreat area, you should determine which type would be best for you.
If you are going to be near the ocean or even a little creek, find out how the local poor people trap fish and crabs.
I got a lot of good information on illegal but effective fishing methods direct from our local game warden!
If you have the money, buy a few commercial crab pots or fish traps and use them for a pattern to build more.
Whatever method you use, if you do it right, you’ll catch more fish with less work than you will with hook and line.
And most important, you can do it without as much chance of giving your location away to roving scavengers.
Here on the east coast, it is definitely a better way of getting protein under survival conditions than trying to hunt small game.
It’s easier and safer for the beginner or the old expert.
So save your ammo and try some SERIOUS SURVIVAL FISHING!
Kurt Saxon thought civilization would have collapsed by now.
He spent the majority of his life collecting knowledge of home based business.
His goal was for all his readers to survive at a more comfortable level than those that were less provident.
He knew the importance of communicating at a level folks could understand.
Most of what he has compiled for our benefit can be easily understood by everybody.
He also includes a subtle sense of humor.
You can find the majority of his life's work here.
Hear him read his stories.
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This is why I live on the ocean. Few realize, even of my neighbors, that almost every seaweed is nutritious and just piles up on the beach daily.
Thanks!
Fishing is still a livelihood of some tribes in Africa.
I lived with a crab fishing family in mexico for a few months.