FISHING EXTRAORDINARY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 67, 9 September 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

FISHING EXTRAORDINARY.

NOOSING SHARKS. Extraordinary methods of fishing are practised by people of different countries, which are not the result of ignorance, but of that ingenuity which dire necessity and the instincts of self support exert in original methods. Those of the Chinese are especially quaint and curious away inland, where they have not yet adopted the generally accepted system of working nets. A very popular method far up the Ning-Po river is generally practised at night, and depends on the attraction which a white screen stretched under the water appeared,to possess for the fishes, decoying thein to it and making them leap. A man, sitting in the stern of a long narrow boat, steers her with a single paddle into the middle of the river, and there anchors. Along the right-hand side of his craft a narrow sheet of white canvas is attached,. which, when he leans to that side, dips under the surface, and if it be a moonlight night, gleams mysteriously through the water. Along the other side of the boat a net is fastened to form a barrier two or three feet high. While the boatman keeps perfectly still, the fish, attracted by the white canvas, approach and leap over the narrow boat, coming in contact with the screen of netting, which stops them, and throws them down at the man's feet.

The lakes and rivers of China, ail, especially of the north of that ancient empire, are so stocked with scaly life that in some places the men called flslieatchers make their living by seizing and drawing the fish out with their hands. The lis.li-catchcr goes into the waler and proceeds half-swimming, halfwalking. raising his arms above his head and leti in;; them drop, striking the surface with the Hat of his hands. At the same lime his feet are moving on the muddy bottom. Presently he makes a swift dive, and brings up a iisli in his hand. The striking of the surface is intended to frighten the fish, Lliat when alarmed sink to the bottom, then, with his naked feet he feels them among the mud, and once felt the practised hand gets them in an instant. Some tribes of South American Indians catch fish by drugging them. They make (he soft branches and leaves of the Indian milk-bush into pulp, which they strew in the water. When the fish taste it tliev lose the power of swimming and are easily caught floating liclp-le:-sly 011 the .surface. Other aborigines mix with a dough a powder made from a shrub, the "Cocculus, indicus," the effect of which, when thrown into the water, is to stupify the fish, and they swim in circles on the surface, when they are caught bv the hand or with nets.'

The Fuegians have a wonderful contrivance for killing the sharks which abound off their coasts. A log of wood shaped like a canoe is set afloat, with a rope and a large noose hanging from one end. Before long a shark attacks the supposed canoe, swimming after it, and is caught in the noose hanging from the stern. It tightens, so that he cannot extricate himself, and the weight of the log keeps him swimming slowly without being able to sink. The natives in their canoes then approach at their leisure, and kill the huge fish with their spears.

Everyone must have heard of the fishing cormorant of the Chinese. On the rivers and canals near Ning-Po, Shanghai, and Foochou, the use of these birds is by no means an uncommon sight. A man takes out 10 or 12 of these web-footed birds in his boat, and as soon as the craft stops, at his word they plunge into the water and begin searching for and capturing fish. If one of them is seen by him to be swimming idly about, he strikes the water near the bird with the tip of a long bamboo, and, thus recalled to its work on hand, the intelligent bird dives once more on its business. Immediately it catches a fish word from the Chinaman brings the cormorant swimming towards him; he draws it into the boat, and it drops the fish out of its bill. Round the bird's nieck there is always a string tied to prevent the fish from being swallowed. The cormorants, of course, have previously been given a system of training, which is carried ou in the birds' breeding and fishing establishments.

The most singular method of fis'hinjr is without a doubt by means of the suckinjr fish or Tomora. In different parts of the world this fish is trained by the natives to attach itself to its scaly prev. to which it sticks so tenaciously that, the fisherman is able to lift both into his boat or ramie by means of the cord fastened to fish that catches fish.