Primitive Survival Fish Trap - Build, Catch and Cook

This week we're going primitive! Fen and I are building a primitive survival fish trap from natural materials native to NW Florida. These fish traps are a lot of work to build but once they're done and fishing, they're well worth the time investment because they're catching fish while you can turn your attention to some other survival matter.

Through experimenting with several different combination trap construction methods and native materials I found that smaller grape vines make excellent weaving materials. River cane (native bamboo) is perfect for the stays (longitudinal pieces), and the aerial roots of grape vines make good bindings.

We're using a pretty basic over, under basket weaving method for the most part. The fish trap we made is big and you certainly don't have to build one as large as this. In addition to the small bluegill we caught, there are some larger catfish in this pond, but we didn't catch any of those. To bait the trap, I split a piece of cane and inserted a couple of worms into the split. The tension of the cane kept the bait in place when we set the trap. In total it took us about 4 hours to build both the main basket of the trap and the funnel.

After catching some fish, just let a fire burn down to coals and throw them on the coals, scales and all. The skin and scales will help protect the meat from burning. It just peels off when it’s done. This is about as primitive as it gets in cooking! We’ll probably do a few more catch and cook vids in the future as well.

When it comes to bushcraft, primitive skills, survival, or whatever you want to call it, a theoretical knowledge is just the start. You need to get out there and practice those skills to truly learn them. The materials you have access to may not be the same as what I’ve used so you may need to modify the methods to work with your local materials. But this is something you won’t know until you actually try it.


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