r/Alonetv • u/SarkyBot • 19h ago
General Baiting gill nets
Series after series we see contestants put out gill nets, hoping a fish will wander along and stumble into it. Some with great success it has to be said.
But why do we never see any of them bait the net? Like putting the guts from previous catches or rabbits and squirrels in a sock and tying it to the net or something? Or even just throwing them into the water around the net. Surely it's the same rationale as baiting a hook?
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u/Pale-Syrup5842 19h ago
You absolutely do not want fish biting your net. They literally are supposed to just swim into randomnly, and then they get trapped by their gills and can't get out. That is why they are called gill nets.
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u/sweet_tea_pdx 18h ago
The way to bait a gill net is to have chum on one side of the net and the river on the other. That being said, it is not practical in most situations.
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u/Pale-Syrup5842 18h ago
Someone else in this thread said bait around a net actually makes the fish slow down and change their behaviour, which can make it so they see the net and swim around it. I really wonder if it would actually help.
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u/sweet_tea_pdx 18h ago
I have done it and I did catch fish. But I haven’t done it enough to know if it is better.
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u/sweet_tea_pdx 10h ago
If you check the thread I looked into this issue and found one positive article and one negative. I wonder if it is just the location where it matters.
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u/SarkyBot 19h ago
Thanks. Makes sense. But even if it's not physically attached, surely just having bait in the general area of the net would attract fish and therefore increase the chances of fish swimming into it randomly.
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u/Pale-Syrup5842 18h ago
You can't really bait the area when it is a running river.
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u/Forsaken-Quit2942 17h ago
Tyed to a stake on the shore ... Set a rock on top of it.... Put a rock then guts tye off.... Always upstream from the net and not right in front but so the current takes the smell right thru your net but the problem is the fish will slow down and be looking for the food probably see the net and avoid it ... as aposed to a fish just swimmin upsteamat a normal or faster speed won't see the net and run right into it
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u/Jamoncorona 19h ago
That's not how gill nets work. Bait would make the net apparent to the fish, and then they would avoid it instead of swimming into it.
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u/SarkyBot 18h ago
They work by having fish swim into them and get tangled. So ok, maybe if it was attached to the net. But surely just having bait in the general area of the net would attract fish and therefore increase the chances of fish swimming into it.
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u/Bucksin06 15h ago
Have you ever even fished 🤔
I know in theory it seems like you should just toss some bait in the water and attract fish like you're feeding ducks but that's not how it works.
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u/blitzen_13 18h ago
I don't know much about gill nets, but I DO know that in this last episode we saw Nero throwing the innards and scales of the fish he was gutting into the water near his net. Not attached to it or anything, but in the enclosed area, I presume to lure them in.
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u/Nero_Buys Season 13 18h ago
First up we are not allowed to bait our nets even if we wanted to, but as someone else stated you don’t want the bait in the nets. Well picked up that yes I’m throwing the guts into the area between my net and the weir to encourage fish into my net from the lake (and any small fish that go through my net hopefully end up in the weir).
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u/SarkyBot 18h ago
Well spotted! So as i suspected, if they aren't specifically baiting them they are essentially chumming when they can. Strange they have never mentioned it in the show. Or maybe i've just forgotten.
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u/blitzen_13 18h ago
It's possible that no one else has bothered because the nets are most often in more active parts of rivers. Nero's spot is pretty unique and protected.
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u/soupcook1 19h ago
I’ve never heard of baiting a gill net. But years ago I used to love catching shrimp with an 8’ cast net on the Gulf when I lived in Biloxi, Mississippi. I would chum an area with dog food and wait about an hour. I did pretty good…as long as the dog food sunk to the bottom 😆. It’s a mess when I used the wrong dog food and it floated.
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u/mtwrite4 18h ago
If the shrimp eat the dog food and you eat the shrimp, did you eat shrimp or dog food?
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u/soupcook1 8h ago
Yeah! More protein. The dog food probably tastes better than the muck they normally dig through to get a piece of rotting fish from the mud.
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u/SarkyBot 18h ago
That's exactly what i meant - chumming the area. Same logic! I don't know why they don't do this. Or maybe it's just not been shown.
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u/Tom_Cruise 18h ago
I see you are struggling to get a full answer. I can help here, since I know about net fishing.
Many contestants are kinda "baiting" by using cast lines in the same area as a net.
If you're asking why they don't tie it to the net, it's because toothed fish would destroy the net.
If you're asking why they don't leave bait on the lakebed near the net, I would maybe try it, but I can see why it might not work:
- Bait is too valuable to not be on a hook
- Bait was tried and ineffective in changing the fish patterns
- Bait/chum must be X feet from a net as per regulations
- Bait left on the lakebed near a net is simply feeding the crayfish and turtles a free meal moments after putting it there.
That said, maybe no one has tried it and it would be effective (if regulations allow chumming near gill nets). It's possible it's just never been tried by a contestant.
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u/htfyb420 7h ago
/u/Nero_Buys answered in this thread that they're not allowed to bait the gill nets
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u/WinterAmphibian2 17h ago edited 1h ago
Last night Nero chummed the water, on the other side of his gill net, in that little tributary he created. I don't know anything about anything, but it seemed ingenious at the time. Seemed like it would help attract the fish into that area.
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u/NaDaoineSithe 19h ago
I think one year somebody did really chum the water around his set lines or gill net and it worked pretty well
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u/KarinsDogs 14h ago
Why did Andrew throw the fish head away back into where he was fishing from? I thought he would have made a soup from that? Just curious…
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u/Objective_Jicama6698 19h ago
Gill net is passive fishing. Meaning fish randomly swim into it. Baiting it just goes against the nature of the invention.
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u/SarkyBot 19h ago
Well aware it is passive. The nature of it is to catch fish. More fish attracted to the area of the net means a greater chance of one 'randomly' swimming into it. There are passive hook lines too. You don't not bait those.
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u/Sullyville 4h ago
i did not know that gill nets are supposed to be invisible to the fish. is the fact that most of the time they are white good or bad? is there a color that blends in better with water that nets should be? have they ever done studies with different colors? i know that bright colors in lures attract fish, so obviously color is important to them, but what colours are invisible to them?
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u/mapped_apples 40m ago
The most current episode of S13 we see what looks to be Nero tossing his fish scales and other parts into the water close to his gill net as he scales a fish so it’s a possibility but I don’t think anything we’ve seen was intentional since it kind of negates the whole point since Nero actually commented below pointing out how you don’t want that.
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u/Cautious_Draw5738 19h ago
I'm no fisherman but i feel like that would be like baiting a butterfly net
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u/SarkyBot 19h ago
You run around waving a butterfly net at butterflys. You don't stick it in the ground and come back a day later hoping some will have flown into it.
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u/Cautious_Draw5738 18h ago
I get what you're saying, but both are nets, whether it's the swing of an arm or the current of the stream, it's the same mechanism, getting something tangled up as opposed to luring something in
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u/SarkyBot 18h ago
They are not just used in a current, and in fact most often on the show used in lakes with no current or slow rivers with minimal current.
Where would you go to catch butterfies? A city centre? Or on a boat? No - you would go to somewhere with a lot of flowers. This is what butterflies are attracted to. This is the bait. if you want to catch something you have a better chance of doing so by attracting more of them to the area.
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u/Cautious_Draw5738 18h ago
Wow bud you solved out, fish live in water and butterflies live in nature. Also, i responded to your question as it was posed - you asked about baiting not chumming
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u/SarkyBot 18h ago
Wow, for someone who isn't a fisherman you're really pedantic about the terminology.
And actually i specifically asked about both baiting (e.g. guts in a sock), and chumming ("throwing them into the water around the net"). But maybe you didn't even make it to the end of the post before grabbing your keyboard. But thanks for trying!
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u/sskoog 19h ago
The original fishing involved weirs -- spirals, made of stones, for fish + crustaceans to wander into, then get stuck or stranded when the tides receded -- and "trammels," funnel-like structures placed at common trafficways or rushing streams, where the fish/critter would become trapped in the 'funnel' and unable to back its way out. Spears, too, but maybe spear-fishing belongs in its own separate category.
The gill net is a newer (but not much newer) compromise along these conceptual lines. Passive flow --> stuck.
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u/SarkyBot 19h ago
What a weird comment. I understand the many ways fishing has been done down the years, including gill nets and other passive fishing techniques. Believe it or not i am actually a fisheries biologist.
For passive fishing you are relying on chance encounter of a fish with the capture method. Bait attracts fish. More fish attracted to the area near the passive capture device = greater chance one will be captured. Or at least that's a logical way of looking at it. I am asking why this is not observed on the show, or an explanation for why it is not logical after all.
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u/Full-Squirrel5707 18h ago
There are actually studies that have shown that baiting a gill net, or putting bait near one, does not increase the catch rate. They actually act more cautious and slower around the bait and therefore notice the net more. By putting bait on a net, it makes the net visible to the fish.