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to methods for catching fish now. Fishes meant for food are
caught by means of fishing nets and/or hooks in the exactly the same
way I've seen elsewhere in Africa and also in Europe (never watched
closely fishing activities so I can't go into many details). Any way
hooks are used to fish in "free water" while nets are used
in areas closer to rocks. I saw nets laid to dry on the beach:
weights at bottom are simple rounded stones of similar weight,
carefully tied at regular intervals to the end of the net, while the
other edge of the net is kept floating by empty tiny plastic bottles
tied to the net's upper edge. Such "poor" fishing tackles
supported by a remarkable ability of local fishermans leads to
abundant catches on a daily basis …that can be observed daily at
Mbamba Bay market.
A
completely different method, which I directly witnessed and in part
performed, is catching fish to be used in aquariums. Generally
speaking, this sort of activity is known as "collecting"
(instead of catching) fishes. Collecting fishes, for the sake of
truth, has been one of the highlights of our 1997 Lake Malawi Trip
(not that strange, after all …eh?)
Direct
fishing: This refers to fishes
you catch by yourself or with friends. You are actually left with
two options:
Catching
juveniles (with aquarium
"hand-nets") among the rocks along the shores, which in
reality gives you the opportunity of a nice walk along the Lake. The
main pitfall is the fact that, when collecting like this, you may
easily get very young specimens and in this case it is very
difficult to go any further than just divide them in M'buna and
Utaka (unless you are a real expert - I must admit I do not go that
far …) Of course, this is like making a little bet on the
future...
Catching
adult and sub-adult specimens is
generally the rule and it is performed by means of
"wall-nets" not that big (let's say 3 X 5 meters - 9 X 15
feet) with really small "holes" and absolutely colourless.
You inspect the surroundings (snorkelling at the surface) and, once
you find a possibly interesting place, you dip the net and
"shake" the water. This situation is new to these fishes
that try to escape; the ones that hit the net (holes MUST be really
small to avoid fishes being "trapped") carry on swimming,
pushing as hard as they can on the net. All you have to do - after
waiting a while for them to get tired - is to dive and catch them by
hand (I happened to get one with my right hand and one with my left
hand at the same time!).
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