How To Make a Fish Spear
You are in survival mode, and are located near a river or lake whose shallow waters are revealing fish lounging or swimming lazily near shore or around the weeds – within reach – if you could just catch them.
If you have a fishing pole and gear, you are all set – all you need to do is to scavenge some bait.
Without fishing gear however, your choices are limited. You could fashion a net if you had the right materials, you could try to catch the fish by hand (good luck with that), or you could try to spear the fish.
I have recently been watching and enjoying a TV show called ‘Dual Survivor’ on Discovery Channel (Dave Canterbury and Cody Lundin), which has provided lots of real-world survival experience (and entertainment), as well as lots of interesting survival ideas. During part of one recent episode, David Canterbury fashioned a fish-spear which he proceeded to use with a make-shift ‘bow’ while harvesting several fish for a delicious meal.
Since he had made the fish-spear from bamboo (a very straight growing hollow-strong wood), and since I have some bamboo growing in the corner of the yard from an expanding growth in the neighbors yard (the stuff spreads like wild fire), I decided to give it a go and make one for myself. After all… practice makes perfect.
The following video illustrates one way to make a fishing spear, which you could use by hand to spear fish, or with a bow for added velocity.
The fish spear could be made of other wood than bamboo, given enough elasticity, strength, and ‘straightness’, and is fairly easy to make.
Find a straight piece of bamboo (or most any wooden branch) that narrows to about the size of a pencil or slightly larger.
Split the end (lengthwise) with a sharp knife into four splinters.
Sharpen each splinter to a point.
Use small wedge pieces to insert between the ‘splits’ in order to spread the tip somewhat.
Use some type of thread or string to wrap around the wedged diameter so to strengthen the spread-out tip section.
That’s it!
Remember, when looking at fish in the water, there is light ‘refraction’. The light bends through the water and the fish will appear slightly further ahead than they really are. Aim slightly behind for a good shot!
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Here is something that works and I have used in the past. A good sized rock! 20-30 lbs. You make sure your shadow in not over the water and raise the rock over your head and bring it down as hard as you can on top of the fish. Be ready to jump in or reach in and grab it. The fish is stunned for a few seconds or so and will usually float to the surface. Another point, the movement of bringing the rock down forcefully sometimes causes the fish to dart away. If the fish are wary and the water clear enough that they can see you try standing motionless and let the rock fall from your hands with minimum body movement. Sounds difficult but it’s very intutitive when you do it. Another trick is early morning or evening for this technique. It make it more difficult for the fish to see what is going on outside of the water.
Another way to get a fish if you have a fishing pole and a good lure and the fish is not interested in the lure is to cast out the lure behind the fish and slowly reel in the lure and when the lure is slightly behind the fish suddenly pull the fishing pole up quickly and the lure will sometimes snag part of the fish. This of course is cheating out of a survival situation but many people (including me when I have been overly frustrated at not catching any fish) snag fish this way when the fish will not bite at bait or some lure. A lure with at least one set of triple barbed hooks is best, the bigger the hooks the better. It is truly a strange sensation to reel and pull in a fish that has been hooked by the tail or other part of the body rather than the mouth.
That is a simple and very good fish speer design that will work with smaller fish. Larger fish will be able to wiggle off of the prongs most of the time unless there is a back hook that will give a bit more hold. You can make those by simply carving a piece of flexible green wood, like willow, so that there is a barb on it and use those for the outer prongs with the barb facing to the center. Rib bones off of a game animal work well for this as well.
It is also a good idea to learn how to build a fish weir and use that to help corral the fish for you to spear. Build the weir in the afternoon one day and then go out early in the morning and block the entrance to the weir so the fish cannot escape the spear wielding angler. Materials for the weir will depend on the stream and bed, but can usually be accomplished just by using rocks in the stream or short sticks that are pushed into the stream bed close together so that the fish coming into the weir cannot swim out between them.