Hand Splash Fishing, are you kidding me?

I know all you guys are going, hand splash fishing? huh?! Do you literally mean you just splash your hand in the water and somehow you will catch fish?

Yes, thats right, you read that right.

And I mean this seriously, I dint mean that you should bleed your hand and start splashing it around in Piranha infested waters, or trying the same trick while Great White Sharks are circling beneath your boat or anything like that (By the way, please DO NOT do what I just said... you may end up splashed in the water and becoming fish meal instead).

Well heres the story, I remember watching this on TV and it was really quite bizarre. It was one of those nature programs, where the emphasis was on traditional forms of fishing and naturally I was interested.

The location was a river that I forget the name of, somewhere on the east coast of Malaysia.

The character involved was a single person, a skillful elder fisherman.

The tools involved were his little boat, I believe some navigation device (could have been a motor) and a series of small stick like items it looked like, with hooks on them. They were I believe tied together with fishing line as well.

The scene basically showed this guy being on his merry way on the river with his equipment ready, and at a certain location, with his boat motor still going (if I recall correctly, in which case he may have had a helper), he begins to splash the water next to him in a vigorous but steady pace.

He continues this splashing as a prelude to his hand splash fishing methodology.

Now what I dont recall is whether or not he was splashing something INTO the water during this so-called hand splash fishing activity (so okay I am naming it 'hand splash fishing' since I have no idea what it is actually called). He may have indeed been splashing maybe bread or something in there but it sure did not look like he was doing any of that.

It was literally, a vigorous and steady hand splashing.

Now after a certain amount of time, and perhaps I am guessing he may actually be feeling the fish biting his hand, he simply lowers a stick with the hook on the end into the water and hooks a fish! (Either that or its some sort of fishermans intuition of knowing when the fish are there, and you and I know there is a lot of that in fishing)

He keeps doing this, since he has a string of such stick hooks, and he hooks a fish one after another. He does this using one hand, while the other hand continues that same hand splashing motion.

It was totally amazing! The fish looked like tin-foil barbs to me. Undoubtedly a whole school of them were attracted somehow and he got them one after another.

So now I know some of you must be like,
"he must be nuts, there could be crocodiles in that river!"
or "he must have been putting bread in there or something"
or "no way!"

Well, let me just say this, "WAYYY!"

This really did happen and this fisherman was really catching fish by just splashing the water and dipping a hook in it.

Now, as I tell you this story, I recall a few things as well. The first is that the Piranhas of the Amazon do tend to get into a frenzy when they find food and once one guy goes in for a morsel, it triggers the rest, and the ensuing splashing action becomes a torrent till no food is left.

I recall as well, one fishing trip I had, involving tin-foil barbs incidentally, where this kind of piranha-like-splashing action occurred, triggered simply by throwing a bait ball of bread with hooks stuck into it at a particular location in a lake. A surge of splashing occurred almost immediately and by the time I reeled in, I had 2 or 3 fish stuck to the hooks!

We kept doing this over and over again, same thing happened, massive splashing, fish literally jumping at the bread ball and we end up hooking quite a few fish.

There is this consistency of splashing being associated with feeding fish. It may just be some sort of ancient observation that people in that part of the river figured out.

I wonder if they still do that today.

Hand splash fishing, it really does exist. Well. at least exist-ed.

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