Any Topic Essay

Fishing Essay

By Lucas Van Eps

Fishing is a fun outdoor sport that many people enjoy and participate in annually.  It is a patient game that takes hours to catch a good fish. Some people do it just for the fun of it, others do it to survive, even others do it to make money in tournaments.  According to the Food and Agricultural Organization there are an estimated 38 million commercial and sport fishermen world wide.  It has been used for thousands of years and is the primary source of food for many people around the world.  There are many different ways to fish besides the typically thought of angling.  Fishing is also part of the economy and provides many people with their food and gives many families their incomes.

There are several different techniques for catching fish.  You can gather, angle, trap, or even spear them.  Gathering is a traditionally low tech way of catching fish.  To do this type of fishing you must have either very fast hands or try to catch very slow moving fish.  Trapping fish is also very low tech way of fishing.  There are very modern fish traps and some old traditional fish traps that have been used for hundreds of years.  Spearing and angling are more recent techniques.  Spearing is relatively simple, you wait very still for a long time and when you see a fish throw at it. Angling is a much more complex way of catching fish.

Angling is the way to catch a fish by hook which is attached to a fishing line.  The line is hooked up to a rod and reel.  There are hundreds of different kinds of rods, ranging from a simple stick to a couple of hundred dollar fiberglass rod.  The standard way to use the hook is to put bait on the hook or have a bait looking hook called tackle.  There are many different kind of hooks and many different kinds of tackle too.  There are also many different kinds of bait.  There are artificial lures and also bait such as worms or minnows.  Many different techniques are used for angling, from jigging to trolling behind a boat.  Angling is a great past time and probably the most efficient way of trying to catch a fish.

Commercial fishing is also a very important industry.  It can range from a huge fishing vessel or a single man selling his fish at the market.  Millions of fish are commercially caught for human consumption and this industry employs millions of people.  There are millions of commercial fishing vessels that catch hundreds of different kinds of fish such as crab, tuna, shark, and many others.  There are also people which raise fish to eat, and also raise them to be released back into the wild, this is called fish stocking.  Commercial fishing is also a very dangerous occupation and costs about 100 peoples’ lives every year in the United States.

Fishing is a fun sport for many people and a job for many other people.  With hundreds of ways to catch fish and thousands of fish to catch, the possibilities of fishing are just about endless.  The history of fishing goes back to thousands of years ago and has been completely changed with our modern technology.  Fishing is a fun sport which I would encourage people to go out and try.