To Catch a Fish

I thought I had planned the perfect sunrise paddle. Full moon? Check! Water level high enough for paddling? Check!; Jim Cantore’s promise of clear skies for a fine sunrise? Check! But it never occurred to me that some local fishing organization might choose to stage a huge bass-fishing tournament for this same morning, launching from this same boat ramp. It was one of the more disheartening moments in my guiding career. And yet, for all the disappointment and the angst I felt as I apologized to my bleary-eyed crew (did I mention it was 5 AM?) the over-riding sentiment was horror for the pending fate of Orange Lake’s fish population. Because the decks of each shiny, high-dollar boats that we watched backing into the water, held an arsenal of rods, reels and fish-catching machinery that made the Normandy landing look like happy hour on Daytona Beach. Looking at this high-tech armada, I marveled at how far Floridians have come in our quest to deprive fish of any semblance of hope.

When I was young, I wondered how primitive fishermen ever survived. Armed with little more than bone hooks and line made from animal sinew, I imagined coming home with an actual fish was cause for a village-wide celebration, with lots of drums, frenzied dancing and something involving scantily clad virgins. It wasn’t until I was a teenager, learning outdoor lore and aspiring to one day wear animal skins and live in a mud-hut, that I started to fully appreciate the prowess of primitive fishermen.

One of my best sources for such information was Tom McCullough, an expert survivalist and a treasure trove of quirky nature lore. We’d spend long days wandering the woods around north Florida, him mumbling snippets of plant or animal lore while I watched for poison ivy. Usually, I would file his observations in the ‘interesting but useless trivia’ lobe of my brain, but occasionally one would leak into the dangerous ‘I could do that!’ lobe. Such was the case when Tom told me about making fish nets from spider webs.

It was day three of a five-day survival camp in the Ocala National Forest; the culminating event for an Outdoor Survival course he was teaching through Santa Fe Community College. We had spent the morning grubbing for edible roots in a low, dense oak hammock. Emerging from the underbrush, we looked at each other and broke out laughing. We were both totally covered with the honey-glazed webs of golden orb weaver spiders (Nephila sp). As we peeled off our silky drapes, Tom mentioned that some Indonesian tribes made fishing nets from Nephila webs. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but I didn’t discard it either--such intriguing lore never really leaves our brain.( Just me?). After rattling around in my head for a few months, I could no longer ignore the idea and set out to make a Nephila fish net. It seemed like it should be easy enough. Nephila spiders, commonly known as banana spiders, live in Florida’s hardwoods in miserable plentitude and I already knew how to make twine. How hard could it be?

The next day I hiked down into “Hoggy Bottoms” (our name for the Hogtown Creek forest along 8th Avenue) where I gathered over 300 webs. Back home with my haul, I twisted and spun till my fingers ached and were caked with a tar-brown pitch that stuck to everything. When finished, I was the proud owner of an attractive (and strong), gold-colored cord. Unfortunately, it was only 2 feet long – hardly enough for a short hand-line, much less a fish net! My enthusiasm died and the cord was relegated to duty as a strap for my sunglasses – a duty it has served admirably ever since.

Several years passed before I learned that my net-making endeavor had been way off the mark. It turns out the natives simply bent the end of a long, thin branch and tied it back on itself to form a hoop – sort of a Flintstones tennis racket. This was then set out where a spider would make a web inside the hoop. For quicker results, they’d waft the hoop gently through an existing spider web like a slow motion tennis swing. A stronger net could be made by adding more webs. It was a great lesson, not so much because I could now fish with spider webs, but because I had learned that nothing brings out the “clever” in our species more than wanting fish for dinner.

High on that list are the Japanese fishermen who train cormorants to catch fish and deliver them to their handler. These birds go through an extensive training that starts at birth. Beginning with a leash and a ring around its neck to keep it from swallowing its catch, the bird eventually performs these tasks obediently, requiring nothing more than its thoroughly washed brain and an occasional fish of its own. Several species are used, all of them close relatives of our local “double-crested” cormorants. To my knowledge, our local species has never been ‘Shanghaied’ into the life of servitude. Oother local species haven’t been so lucky.


In the distant past, when superstition rested on the same shelf as science, ospreys were believed to have special oil in their feathers that stunned fish. Their feathers were sometimes collected and used as fishing aids. Later, falconers tried to train ospreys, but the ospreys would have none of it. Apparently, they were fine with the first part of the act – catching the fish - but never got the part where they were supposed to deliver it to the guy with the bewildered look on his face standing on shore. Instead, they flew to a nearby perch and snarfed the fish for themselves.

Closer to home, some of Florida’s aboriginal people had a few great tricks of their own. Perhaps the most interesting was remora fishing. Remoras are bizarre looking fish, whose dorsal fin has evolved into a powerful suction disc on top of their head. With this, they attach themselves to just about anything that passes, including fish, turtles, manatees and even the occasional boat. The practice of remora fishing, first noted by Columbus among the Arawak Indians, involved tying a cord around the fish’s tail and releasing it into the sea. Always eager for a free ride, the remora would latch on to the first thing that passed and the fishermen would then pull in the remora with its catch. Sea turtles were the main quarry, but fish and even an occasional manatee were also landed. The Arawaks held their remoras in high esteem and sang songs of praise to them. Australian aborigines, who also fished with remoras, were apparently more hungry than grateful - often eating their remoras at the end of the day.

On Florida’s inland waters, weirs and basket traps were sometimes used. Near the town of High Springs, beneath the cool, tannin-stained waters of the Santa Fe River, a line of eroded post holes in the limestone river bottom are the remains of an ancient fish weir. Spanning the width of the river, the line of posts formed a downstream pointing funnel which presumably had a wicker basket attached in the center to catch the fish. An interesting description of how such weirs were sometimes used in other parts of the country comes from an article written in 1902, by V.K. Chesnut.

In that account, California’s Pomo Indians stunned fish with mashed roots from the toxic soap plant (Chlorogalum pomeridianum). The operation involved many people, sometimes from several neighboring villages, who took up stations along the river and dumped the root-poison into the river until the fish and eels went belly up. They were then grabbed or washed downstream into a weir. The Santa Fe weir may have been similarly used, since a number of local plants are known to have been used as fish poisons, including dogwood and smartweed.

Once, while paddling the Waccasassa River with my son Niklaus, we paused under the low canopy of a beautiful little red buckeye tree. As he palmed one of the tan, plum-sized fruits, I explained how local Indians ground them into a mash and put them in the stream to knock out fish. Needless to say, Niklaus spent the rest of the day, gathering and tossing buckeye seeds into the river as we made our way down stream. Fortunately, his 6-year-old attention span had missed the part about having to grind the seeds, so he became a veritable “Johnny Buckeye seed” who may one day be credited with planting a wondrous buckeye forest along the banks of the Waccasassa.