Memories of Fishing In China, by Tiger Huang

One of the nicest things about doing this blog is that it puts me in touch with lots of people throughout the world. Recently, I received an email from China from Tiger Huang, a dedicated Chinese angler and budding fishing historian. He agreed to write up a small piece for the blog on some aspects of Chinese fishing.

Memories of Fishing in China

by

Tiger Huang

My name is Tiger Huang. Let me tell you a story. To a fisher or an angler you may not help but laugh because I’m sure you’ve heard similar stories before.

I was born in a remote rural villiage in the Anhui Province, which is well-known as the Dabie Moutain Area. When I was in a primary school I began to fish. There are many pools, often linked with rivers here in the mountain area. Some of the pools are natural and some of them are man made for irrigation of agriculture plants especially rice, as well as being used to cultivate fish and even Jumbo Shrimp. My house was surrounded by trees and grasses, but the most important plant to me is Bamboo. Every day I walked by them, I would climb them. These are small parts of my childhood life. The summers there are quite hot, and the adults like to have a rest before the afternoon work. It was a time for the children to play with their friends. We would always go to a pool and then jump in or dive into the water to enjoy the water and the sunshine. To avoid our parents' discipline, we had to get back before they woke up.


Dabie Mountain is the watershed of the Yangtze River and noted for its picturesque lakes and small streams.
After school or in the Summer holidays, we were absolutely free and wild. We swam in the small rivers or went to a bamboo plantation so we could cut down a bamboo shoot to use as our rod. We would return home and find a needle for mothers' sewing kit. We bent the needle as a hook, so that the only thing we are lacking is a fishing line and lures. For fishing line we had no choice to buy them for a small shop with our little allowance. Lures, wow! Lures are everywhere if you really want to find them: earth worms, locust, frogs, even the crabs. We threw rice out so the fish would gather together and then we’d bait our needle hooks with earth worms found around the area. Now, waiting is all we can do! We always had little patience so when we got back home with small fishes 9 of 10 times we feed them to a cat or a dog. Besides a cat the greatest lover of fish, I think, would be the dog. If you have one give it a try.

When I graduated from University and went to work in the off-shore city of Ningbo, the opportunity to go fishing became scare. But the memory of childhood fishing always comes back to my mind. When I first heard that there are so many styles of fishing, I was startled! Fly Reels, Spinning Reels, Jigging Reels, Trolling Reels(Big Game Reels), Baitcasters, wow! What a significant field. Even now sometimes I am confused but my strong interest in them will last forever in my life.

Here is one kind of new reel your readers may not have heard of. It’s called the Revelation Spyder Fly Reels. I'd like call this kind of reel a “Hand-pulling Fly Reel” because it looks like a traditional Fly Reel but I have to tell you that there are big difference between traditional Fly Reels and this reel. Many traditional Fly Reels use a mechanical drag system but this reel has only a hand drag system. So this kind of reel is great for skilled fly fishers but not for the new fly fisher like me. I hear that this kind of reel is prevalent in Taiwan, China, and South Asia, but why? Because this kind of reel could give you much more fun fighting with the fishes, and complete control during the battle is a great show of your fishing skills.


Revelation Spyder Fly Reel.
Many thanks to Tiger Huang for sending this our way. It just goes to show us how small the world truly is! Tiger maintains a web site which you can access by clicking here.

-- Dr. Todd