Bushcraft Fishing: Using a Hobo Reel

Description

A simple method of fishing. Not technically legal in the UK but can be used in many other parts of the world to great effect.

Fishing Laws UK - https://www.gov.uk/browse/environment-countryside/fishing-hunting

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Tags: woodland,forest,mountains,river,lake,tinder,Survival,Bushcraft,survivor,knife,knives,valley,axe,camping,tent,footwear,hunting,fishing,backpack,clothing,boots,primitive,nature,shelter,shooting,shotgun,rifle,rucksack,flashlight,torch,craft,plants,trees,education,wilderness,family,hobbies,fun,animals,game

Video Transcription

hi there guys smite from mcq bushcraft here and in this video I wanted to introduce you to my bushcraft fishing kit it's a very basic kit and it's really just made out of a long piece of wood or a couple of bits of wood bolted together one of them has a compartment in the back for spare hooks and sinkers and it has some line on the front and I recently updated my leather work and I found an old pair of boots and use them to make this pouch for the actual fishing kit itself and to do a wrap on the handle of the kit to make it more comfortable to use and fishing kits like this are really easy to make and it doesn't really take a lot to build them even if you're out in the field you just need a piece of wood it's just the tackle that's really the important part and the hard part to replicate out here in nature but before we actually go through on how we make this kit and how you can build one of your own let's see what it can do and see what we can catch for bait I'm using earthworms and all I've done it's gone around and disturbed some of the mole hills that are around here and uncovered some of the worms that are beneath and just collected them and put them in a pouch on my belt I normally use this page for my slingshot but for today it can be a beta page frozen when I need it there are a few reasons why I'm using worms and it's obviously a very readily available bait that I can just dig up out in the fields and news but it's also an excellent bait choice for trait and we have quite a lot of traits in this river here and Trank being a predatory fish will take the worm they've got quite a big mouth on them so they'll come up and take the worm and it's a very good combination really and traits a game fish there's a few different varieties of trait and we have quite a lot of brain trait in this river here and being a game fish it's quite a tasty fish and it's a great combination if you're not carrying much kit on you to dig up worms and fish for tray if you're fishing in kind of like a bushcraft context so now we've got our bait sorted let's have a look at the area I've picked a fishing and talked of it about why I've chose this area we've got a nice little stream here very shallow along this point here that comes all the way around into a nice deep packaging cuts on through goes further downstream and the main thing I'm looking for when I pick an area to fishing especially for trait is these nice Eddie's here this is a nice deep swirl of water where the current just kicks on by and it gets very very deep here which is ideal I'm not going to be fishing in the shallow fast-moving waters because I'm just not going to have any luck this is the area I want to be fishing them coz areas like this off of the fish quite a lot in terms of resources for feeding before I did go out and fish I check the weather and what it's been like the past few days you generally get an idea living in the world what the weather's doing anyway so if it's been raining an awful lot I generally avoid coming out because the river levels can go up very quickly and they get very muddy and clouded and the visibility in the water becomes very poor and your chances of actually catching anything go down especially when you're using a dull bait like a worm if we look at the area I'm standing on I'm standing on a little island and we have a look over here on the river you'll see loads of stinging nettles and brambles and all kinds of shrubbery I'll never be able to get my fishing line or my hook even a fish up through that I cast off the end of that standing up there into that Eddy there's no way I'm getting my tackle back it would just get torn and just get lost and I have to wade through it all almost every time I cast it out - to get it free it'd be a complete nightmare so I've set myself up in an ideal position I've found a good Eddy there it's probably going to harbor quite a few fish I mean as I say I've already seen them feeding off the surface but I can cast out and reel in towards myself just just here like this with no snags at all I mean obviously but I watch things like this but then you can just pick them up and throw them to one side is just the stuff that's rooted into the ground that you're tugging against and you'll never get your line free so you want to preserve your fishing tackle you may be somewhere very remote in the world and it might be the only fishing tackle you've got on you so even then it becomes even more important it's your lifeline to a meal or even if you're out on a day like I am just fishing on a local River it's still annoying having to wade through layers of stinging nettles and brambles to free up my line every time so it's just something to bear in mind find yourself a nice patch with an a/d like this and a line and way of drawing up towards yourself with minimal chance of snags and you have a much better day and you're more likely to get a meal by the end of it I've got a nice big worm here and you can see there's the head of the worm and I'm going to take the head of the worm and just put him through this hook here it's obviously not too keen on it as I wouldn't blame them to be just like this make sure he's behind the barb like that and this way he's not going to come out and that's ready to cast in there casting the hand line is very easy I just put one finger just above the float now I make sure things aren't snagged up first so you can see I'm just holding the line with my finger and I hold this in the other hand just cats like that just point in the direction I want to go that was a pretty poor cast but you can always reel in and have another go so I've let the float drift I've just been unraveling the line as I go and it scaled all the way around the back of a swirl now it's coming into the tail of the swirl just another good areas fifth there we go go something well quite a tug on him as well actually it feels like quite a big one when you've got something you just want to keep bringing it in you can let it play a bit I wouldn't let it play too much actually just feel like quite a quite a big one I've got 8 pound line on this say oh here we go quite a nice lie straight actually considering that's it that's a good meal there you go lovely track just there nice big one just get miss cleaned up you're decent a piece of meat there really dinner really nice

so I've been in for about half an hour and I've got a fight doesn't feel like a very big one sigue just a nice little track you can see this one's a bit small so I'm just gonna put him back he's not really big enough for a meal so now we've had a look at what the kit can do I've caught myself some lunch let me show you how you can actually make one and the tackle that I use which is really the most important part of the kit so if we have a look at the fishing kit the sheath is really optional and you can make something like that out of leather if you wish I've just stitched it down in the back there along the base and this sort of decoration around the top was already part of the boot and I've glued some soft leather inside just so it fits a little bit more snug and put a belt loop in so just something optional that you can make for the kid itself no matter how much you dress it up is literally just a stick with a line wrapped around it in my case I put some more leather wrapping around it you can see some more decoration there and a lanyard as well so it can go on my wrists just for security and in my case it's two pieces of wood I got given a gift some time ago and it had an the needle container with bone needles in and there's a little lid that goes on the top of here and what I've done is just put a big screw all the way through to a second piece of wood on the end there which is where my line is just so I could have a compartment at the back and you could just take one piece of wood and drill a big hole and router tight make a lid for the back out of a cork of a wine bottle for example and have your spare hooks and sinkers in the back there so that is an option in my case it's just something that gradually evolved and that's why it looks the way it does but if I was going to go and make one I'd probably just take one piece of wood and drill a hole through the back and put my spares in the in the back there and make a lid out of a wine cork so you can go any way which way you like with that really I have done some leather wrapping as well around it and you can see I've used a cross stitch for that it's very simple to do just need a leather punch and you punch the holes and just put some leather cord through and gradually tine it up as you go and it doesn't take too much work and then you end up with a nice handle that you can hold on to and something that looks nice because ultimately you know I quite like making things look good as well rather than just being functional but getting to the important stuff which is the tackle it's on the front there and we'll talk a bit about that because that is the part you want to get right as I say you can make this out of a piece of wood you find on the day don't necessarily have to make yourself a plush kit for going out fishing with so the tackle really is the main thing and some people do just carry tackle I've got a piece of elasticated fabric around the head of mine there's a reason for that and it's I can I can put my hook just here into that elasticated fabric to keep it from snagging on things and it's in my kit and on my belt and inside the sheath and you just done pick it from that material and take that sheath off and I usually put that in my pocket and you can see the line just unravels like so if we take it in a little bit you can see my float there and I've got two sinkers and it goes all the way down to my hook and it's about two foot of length in terms of depth which I've judged pretty well on the river level today which is something you need to bear in mind if we look at the ends they're the piece of wood that actually has the line wrapped around you'll see that the line is pretty much flush with the head and that's important I've carved a small indentation out there by running my knife around here in here and then carving away the wood gradually a depression so I can put my line in there and I made sure that head wasn't overhanging because if it's overhanging too much it won't cast very well and that's something you do need to bear in mind you want it to cast very far and nice and smoothly and unravel gradually and your line not to get snagged on on the actual end piece then you really want to make it flush with the line and that's what I've done there and it works very well the line I've got on here is eight pound line and that's more than capable of doing the job and little streams and rivers like this you don't want to go too thick because if you go to you thick you're just going to compromise your ability to catch things because it just looks us and it won't look right and try it very perceptive which is why you want to use a small hook as well to make sure things look as natural as possible I've got quite a lot of line on here a whole spool of line that I bought so I've got more than enough to last me have a long I need really and if we look at this flight this is what's called the to be be float meaning it uses to be B sized weights to weigh it down correctly and you can see there's a small piece of rubber just here at the top of the float which holds the line and the line runs down goes for a small eyelet and then I've put one but one of the BB weights at the base there and this can be adjusted as well I should say so if I suspect the water level being deeper I can pull that up free the weight up with my fingernail and slide it up the line just like that so I can adjust for depth if I need to so it's a very versatile setup you can see I use a very small hook and this is a number 10 micro barbed hook and again for little rivers and streams like this I wouldn't use anything bigger than a number 10 because again you're just going to make things look out of place and whether you believe it or not the fish are very perceptive of things like this and the smaller you go with all this set up in little rivers and things the more success you'll have and when you get a good set up it will work very well and when you start getting to know the river things will start coming together a bit better as well but you can see this tiny little micro barbed hook is just on the end there and they're very easy to tie on and I can show you a not attaching a hook is very simple you have an eyelet on the hook you put the line through just like say take the slack like that and what you're doing is you're going rain six times with the slack so one is three four

five six you can see I'm just grabbing it with this fingers there and we then put that through the loop at the top and wet it with your mouth pull that through like that and then just pull the line and it all stacks up to a nice knot there just like that you don't want to pull it too much to place you stress the line now usually take it right back and give it a pull like that and there it is and you can just bite or cut the slack off just there there it is very simple so you can see overall a very very basic set up and to put it away we just put that hook back into that fabric like that then you can turn the fabric slightly just to tighten it up and we can pop that back in there we obviously have some spares in the back I can show you what I have there I've got a series of micro barbed hooks numbers number tens again they've got some larger hooks as well for fishing off of rocks on the coastline things like bass which you know sometimes you do get a bit of success with but I find river fishing a lot more successful for me anyway these are just some spares rolled up in some felt and they can go in the back here and you can also see I've got some weights as well just in the back there as well and they're pretty much all the same size as the weights I have on the line so now you've seen the kit and you've seen what it can do and it's a really basic set up really just engineering for me to go and catch game fish like tracked in rivers like this that really surround me everywhere in this part of the country and it's a really nice thing to be able to do especially when you're camping

here you can go out and catch yourself some food and I find fishing far more fruitful than hunting I think in a respect for me I enjoy fishing a bit more and I fished a lot when I was young with my father and we spend a lot of days out on the river together I'm sure I enjoyed it a lot more than he did from talking to in these days but yeah there are fond memories and you know something I've always dabbled in throughout the years after and it's a it's the thing about bushcraft really it's not about specifically focusing on one thing it's just about being a bit of a jack-of-all-trades and sort of being versatile and proficient in your natural environment when you can do that and you can move through it quite comfortably and make use of the natural resources within it with just some basic gear and even substitute that basic gear for things you can find naturally and you'll really find it a much easier ride just going out being outdoors and and roughing it and enjoying it it's good fun I hope this video really helped on the fishing kick and there will be more videos to come when the season opens up again for me and I'm able to you need to do more fishing like this but for the time being obviously you know I don't want to take too much because it's not really too good from the conservation perspective but I hope you've enjoyed the video and I will put links to everything that I've mentioned in the description as well as a detailed explanation in the description of the things you need you know so the line the hooks and all that sort of thing and there are lots of videos out there on how to attach you know hooks and things if you want to try different methods of attaching them there's loads of videos out there on fishing or I'll endeavor to make more but obviously in the meantime you know there are planning out there if you do want to sort of top off on your knowledge and go and just try things out if you want so thanks again for watching and I appreciate you commenting and actually watching the videos and I'll answer any questions I can and seem as I can thanks again guys I'll see you in the next vid take care