Primitive Skills- Freshwater Fish Trap

In the primitive period, people mainly lived on wild forests and streams to survive. The forest is a place where people can hunt for wild animals, collect flowers and fruits to serve human life in the primitive period. Stream provides drinking water, seafood such as fish, crab, shrimp, snails, oysters, eels, … and other seafood. Although the source of life is so, the food is plentiful but not everyone can live in the forest as “primitive skills“. The reason for “primitive skills” can live in the forest like a true primitive without any impact by modern technology. The important thing here is that a “skills”, you need to have certain “skills” to be able to exist like that.

Okay, no rambling, in this article “primitive skills” will introduce to you one of the “skills” that I use often, which is how I use to catch fish in streams in the wild forest. , where there is no influence of modern people now.

I have built a simple and highly effective trap basket, anyone can do it by their own hands if they know how.

First of all, the tools used here are: stone axes, chisels, wooden chopsticks and other usable sharp stones. All of these tools can be found here.

Now “primitive skills” begin by going into the forest to choose straight, not too old bamboo trees to ensure enough flexibility; Not too young to be sure. This is a gift from nature, we need to consciously protect it, avoid stepping on the lovely young shoots are rising to be as useful as its mother. After selecting the tree, use a sharp stone to cut around the tree into a circle, using a smaller stone that has been ground like a chisel to chisel until the bamboo is completely broken. There will be many cases like in the “video“, after cutting trees and because their tops are captured by another tree, they cannot fall down, we have to drag them down with our hands to control them, then use a sharp saw and cut them. Cut them into short pieces to easily carry them. Choose the best straightest section of bamboo and remove the bamboo eye. Using a sharp stone saw cut near the bamboo eye in a circle until almost cut, continue using your hands to separate it carefully to avoid the bamboo tube from breaking. After removing the bamboo eye, we set it up, placed the stone chisel at the top of the newly cut bamboo, and used a wooden stick to chisel to conduct the chisel from the top down to create a split line of the bamboo tube. The second gap is the distance from the first cut with the little finger to create small pieces of bamboo. The remaining pieces of bamboo are made similar to the first one. After splitting, if the pieces of bamboo are too big, you can split them into pairs or trio by placing them on another piece of wood and using chisel wood hammer to chisel from the top down to separate them. Once the frame of the fish trap is completed, we next process the strings to knit it into a basket. Use a sharp stone (stone knife) combined with a wooden hammer to separate the bamboo tubes into small pieces of bamboo as shown in the picture:

 The “primitive skills” uses a stone knife to make a crack at the tip of the bamboo, marks it in the middle, then moves the stone knife in the direction of travel to the rest to separate the bamboo stick into 2 thinner pieces ( called bamboo strips). After separating the number of bamboo strips (about 60 pieces) to use, we proceeded to knit into the basket frame.

Conducting basket knitting, knitting simultaneously pairs. When the first bamboo strip is passed over the bamboo in odd order, the second bamboo strip will pass under the oddly ordered bamboo strip and above the bamboo evenly order to knit them together to create a solid connection. Each bamboo is separated by the little finger at the beginning of the knitting so that when the trap will filter the fish are big enough without holding too small ones. Knitting like that until it is about 40cm long, use a sharpening stone to cut off the excess of the spokes then check for any errors. If there are no errors, move on to the next step, knitting another to create traps. This is measured and knit so that it is smaller than the previous one, from the top down and the pads used for knitting must also be smaller to make sure. After knitting about 8 loops, measure and cut it to make it more appropriate like in the “video“, then continue to knit about 4 loops at a distance of 5cm above the 8 loops so you can squeeze your inner head. Again to form a trap. The way the trap works is that the fish is easy to get inside the basket, but in the opposite direction, it will get trapped in the trap. Attach the trap to the basket and secure it securely. After knitting, check to see if the gap between the bamboo sticks is too wide, if available, use a strip of bamboo to weave round and squeeze near the large edge of the basket and tie.

Next is how to trap “primitive skills” fish. Surely everyone knows that traps must be lured, yes it is important that we have bait, bait to lure fish when they smell the bait they will come and how to approach to catch prey. That’s what we need to pay attention, it’s almost the most important thing in deciding whether or not to catch fish. Ok, so the next thing to do is hunt for prey, in this article “primitive skills” will use earthworms as bait. Earthworms are not too hard to find, they usually live in wet areas, just using sticks or digging tools will be able to find. Here I use about 5 worms, mix them with a handful of soil and then tuck it into the inside end of the bamboo tube and compact it with a stick. Then attach the trap and fasten. Use straps to hang the ends of the basket to anchor.

Traps are often used during times of rain, flood or cloudy water, as this is when the fish find food in the greatest numbers. Look for springs that have deep enough water, running smoothly to set traps, not where the water flows quickly. Find a place to tie the anchors, wait until they are trapped and pick them up.

  And as you can see, it was a perfect result when I applied from existing things in the wild to trap fish with primitive skills, isn’t it great? and swimming is now for me to enjoy.

Thank you for reading through the article on “primitiveskills.net”

See you next posts !!!