Last week I watched some frogmen crawling around in the river behind our house.  Nishimori san mentioned he was going fishing with nets, so when I walked down to the river and saw a guy floating around in a wet suit I was a little suprised.  Wada san the shopkeeper was chatting to the guy and he was laughing and scratching his head, bemused like.  He walked away laughing saying “駄目, 駄目!”.  It’s unusual to see frogmen spear fishing I think.  I walked the river bank and there was Nishimori’s flag-license:

It wasn’t too exciting to watch and I fancied a bit of breakfast so I returned to the house.

Anyway, later I noticed more wet suited guys had joined in, crawling around.  It was all very systematic.  As a group they moved up the river, like Plecoptera, with their heads submerged.  Did they catch many fish?  I could see little silvery bits on the ends of the spears but my eyes aren’t what they used to be.  After a couple of hours they disappeared from the river and reappeared in the woodmill next door to our house.  We were invited to join the small gathering..

Everyone was nicely beer’d up, so they spoke passionately about the fishing.  They spear fish because it’s fun, not because it is easier to catch fish.  The spears they use are really quite lovely.  All hand-made, completely individual.  Made from bamboo, metal dowling, elastic and string, the design was passed down.  We had a close look at three of the spears and each one had a unique tip.

This one had a familiar shaped prong, but the shaft was made from bamboo.  It was so smooth and well used.  At the end of the shaft a large loop of rubber allowing the spear to be held under tension and released with a thrusting motion.  Also known as a gidgee or a polespear.

The other two used elasticated hooks:

It’s important that the hooked ends are elasticated so there the fish can struggle and not destroy everything.  Each one had a slightly different way of elasticating the hook.  The hook on the right in the picture above had a hollow metal shaft and a elasticated string was run down this and fixed into the handle at the bottom like this:

The other hook was slightly different.  The hook was tied to a piece of string and this was fed into the hollow main shaft then out of a little hole and attached to a piece of elastic.

The elastic was looped over a brazed hook.

These were beautiful objects.  Really well used.  I wonder which tip was most effective?  Having a group of people all with different types of spear must be the best way to catch a lot of fish.  I’ll try and build one of these myself for next year; it’s going to be fun!