Fishing Methods 2 - Nets

1)  Ba-ling fine-mesh pull net - to catch small schooling fish, like Poot-Poot (anchovies), Mugiw, (half beaks), small Bayo (Long Toms), Ibis (ambassis), Agak (small danggit - spinefoots), Tigi (small 'minnows' at seashore on full moon nights), for example.

Although this drawing shows only men handling the net, often it is a whole family who cooperate, including the children.

Drawing by Rhon - Captions by Myrna

Each has a specific task:

• Palawan - holds the wood stiffener at each end of the net.

• Tokoy - pulls the net with a rope looped around his waist

• Surambaw - holds the side ropes of the net (festooned with tied-on plastic bags, to scare the fish) and generally encourages them into the net

• Sa tunga - at the middle of the net, clearing it from rocks, etc

• Apyaw - stands 'upstream' of the net, throwing rocks to scare the fish into the net

Today, the fishermen use fine-mesh nylon mosquito netting to catch the small fry, and larger meshes to sweep the bigger fish.

In the past, they used abaca fibre nets, from a relative of the banana 'tree'. Abaca can be stripped from the leaves in very thin threads - down to 0.3mm, and is very tough (though not as tough as nylon). The abaca netting shown (right) was probably made on an industrial loom (it came in 54" wide rolls) and is only made now for decorative fabrics. But it, or some very similar fibres, were used before nylon monofilaments became widely available.

Coconut fibre can also be used for coarser mesh nets - fibre woven from the husk (coir) or from stripped-out leaf veins. Both were used in the past to bind the side-planking for boats, and, of course, to bind bamboo trunks for rafts.

2) Dagpas - Scare Netting - for 'resident' fish schools around a coral head, for instance. It is used in the lagoon, with larger gauge nylon monofilament nets. Two or three men in a boat surround the target fish school with a net about 4' - 6' deep, reaching to the surface. Then they jump in and scare the fish away from the rocks into the net. 

• Lukay (coconut leaf) is a another name, when coconut leaves (about 6-10 ft long) are slapped on the water surface.

• I have seen exactly the same method used in Jordan, by Bishara, a Lebanese friend from Sidon. His brother sat on the boat bow, spying out fish schools; 'Ya samak!' he would shout; then they put down the net, and jumped in - but Bishara chased any getaways by the tail and brought them back. He was a great swimmer, and a water-ski champion who could ski barefoot from the beach.

3) Ayawa, Sigpaw - Small one-man scoop nets for shrimp or fry at the shoreline - margin reinforced with flexible stainless steel rod, but before, with bamboo or rattan. Ayawa is a fine mesh net, made as a circle or a square, the Sigpaw with a coarser mesh for small fish of for collecting sea urchins.

4) Sudsud - A one man scoop net, braced by two side bars. You scoop up the fish, then fold it together using the bars.

5) Pahapdok - A deep gill-net with a large mesh, about 6" x 2", placed at night in the likuron, the deeper waters off the fore reef. Made as a  corral trap for larger reef fish as they go out feeding from the reef (from about 7pm - midnight). Catches Danggit (spinefoot), Langog (trevallies and jacks) and Gangis (surgeonfish). It would also catch Moymoy (parrotfish), if they weren't all sleeping, wrapped in self-made blankets, tucked away under coral ledges.

6) Panhayas - A similar, but easier, technique for catching fish on the back reef. As with the ba-ling, the fish are 'encouraged' into the net by thowing rocks at them.

7) Limok - Pamo net is used to surround a coral head or section of the reef while you hunt, usually at night, with a spear gun (or poison - tear gas is used sometimes). Catches the larger fish if they get away.

 8) Laja - A shore or shallow water based lightly weighted throw net. These boys have caught at least a small meal (Tayad and Latab) in a half-hour from the beach right in front of their house.

9) Sinsoro - This method uses two boats working together, with a gill net slung between them. They surround the fish, then close in and haul up the net.

10) Tangle nets - These are long nets (about 100 metres) simply weighted and laid on the bottom, to catch shells and crustaceans overnight. 

11) Lambay - A simpler and better-hung nylon 4" mesh nylon net about 300m long is bottom-set overnight in shallow sand-based water to entangle lambay (swimming crabs).

12) Buso is another type of netting/diving combination, with a very long wide-mesh multi-strand Pamo weave, for heavyweight fish coralling, assisted by a diver with a compressor-driven hose pipe. They are basically tangle/gill nets, strung out deep across certain offshore contour lines, to catch travelling billed fish, like blue marlin, sailfish and tuna. 

Poisoning Pigeons in the Park...

But there is another way of using a Pamo net, for night fishing. You hang the net under and along the boat, out beyond the reef, with a Petromax kerosene gas-mantle light suspended on either side.  The boat above right has a floating raft lighting system using  just kerosene wick lamps in bottles. 
On the morning I took this picture, two boats just this big had brought 18 sailfish between them, of about 30kg each.

The lights attract small fish, Bodloy, and squid, then, under them, the larger pelagic predators, Salindato (Scombrids - the mackerel family), and then under them, the even bigger fish - Tanguigue (Spanish Mackerel), Malasugi (Blue Marlin) and Lip-lipan (Sailfish). 

To help the process along, you can utilize the infamous Lagtang beans, the poisonous seeds of a forest vine. You mix up some finely chopped and pounded lagtang with some minced fish, and ground-bait the water under the boat. 

The immediate effect is to intoxicate the small fish, make them drunk and balintong, tumbling and rolling in the sea. The flashing silver sides and bellies (now you've got enough free bait!) bring in the bigger fish, and then the bigger ones still. They lunge at the small bait, often miss, and then get tangled in the net. Sometimes they get drunk too, and just barge head first into the net, like a drunkard against a lamp post.

On other islands, like Cebu, with higher mountains and more river estuaries, the Lagtang comes naturally, washed downriver from the forests in the seasonal rains. In the same season, small 'herrings' assemble in large schools in the estuaries. They get drunk and balintong very naturally, with the washed-down natural poison, and can be caught in huge numbers. The price in the market goes very low indeed, partly because there are so many, and also because they are poisoned. People who eat them get red flushes, rashes, and numb areas across their bodies. The balintong cannot be sun-dried as usual for preserving - that just concentrates the poison. The only way to make them safe is to twist their tails, so, and pull out their spinal cords. 

See: Eco-Friendly Fish Poisons

Nets Used Elsewhere

From: Colin Turnbull's 'The Forest People' Simon & Schuster 1961

"Hunting, for a Pygmy group, is a co-operative affair - net-hunting particularly…For the net hunters it is impossible to hunt alone. Men, women and children all have to co-operate if the hunt is to be successful.

We all spread out in a long semicircle, each man knowing exactly who should be to his right and who to his left.

Maipe deftly joined (the main net) to his net; then, slipping each coil off his shoulder in turn, he hung it, fastening it to low branches and saplings. It stretched for about three hundred feet, so that one end was completely out of sight from the other. It stood about four feet high, and Maipe walked the length of it, silently adjusting it so that it touched the ground all the way along and was securely fastened above. When this was done he took up his spear and casually sharpened it with a stone picked off the ground.

…then at some signal that I did not even notice there was a burst of shouting, yelling, hooting and clapping, as the women and children started the beat. They must have been about half a mile away, and as they came closer the noise was deafening.

We saw one antelope, a large red sondu, ears back, leaping toward the boulders as though it were heading straight for our net, but at the last moment it saw us and veered away to the left. Maipe could probably have killed it with his spear, but he said, "That is not for us. It will probably fall into Ekianga's net." Just then there was a lot of yelling from Moke's nephew. Maipe vaulted over the net and ran swiftly, leaping and bounding like the sondu to avoid obstacles. I followed as best I could, but was passed by several youngsters from farther down the line before I reached the othes. The sondu had gone into Ekianga's net, just as Maipe had said, but while all the attention was in that direction a water chevrotain, the sindula, had tried to fight its way through Moke's net.

The sindula is one of the most prized animals; it is not much larger than a small dog but is dangerous and vicious. Moke's nephew, probably not much more than thirteen years old, had speared it with his first thrust, pinning the animal to the ground through the fleshy part of the stomach. But the animal was still very much alive, fighting for freedom. It had already bitten its way through the net, and now it was doubled up, gashing the spear shaft with its sharp teeth. Maipe put another spear into its neck, but it still writhed and fought. Not until a third spear pierced its heart did it give up the struggle.

Usually game is brought back to camp before it is divided, and in some groups the dead antelope would have been sent back to camp immediately, around the neck and shoulders of one of the youngsters. But here the womenfolk crowded around as Ekianga hacked away, each claiming her share for her family. "My husband lent you his spear. . . ." "We gave your third wife some liver when she was hungry and you were away. ..." "My father and yours always hunted side by side. . . ." These were all typical arguments, but they were not needed. Everyone knew who was entitled to a share, and by and large they stuck to the rules".

How do you think Congo pygmies learned fish-netting techniques for small game in the forest?