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Aboriginal Hand Line Fishing Tools

Fishing is the most widely-mentioned subsistence activity that has been practiced by Australian Aborigines, and customs of old still produce impressive results to this day. Traditional Aborigines use a wide variety of hand-made tools to catch marine creatures such as fish, dugongs and crocodiles for food, tools and other cultural purposes. Multipronged spears made from sharpened kangaroo bones called "fizz gigs," rock dams and poison for small bodies of water are still used by native Australians, as well as several hand line fishing tools to catch shellfish, stingrays and turtles from river estuaries, fresh water lakes and coastal shores of the Island Continent.

Hand Lines
- Aborigines still use hand lines made from plant fibers, alone or attached to bobbing canes, to catch fish in the ocean and inland waters. While men usually fish with spears, women walk along the shore and use hand lines with rocks for sinkers and shaped shells for hooks. For off-shore expeditions in canoes, harpoons attached to hand lines are thrown to pierce sharks, dolphins or dugongs, marine mammals similar to manatees, and stronger, heavier lines equipped with the same stone weights and shell hooks are used to catch larger fish.
Nets
- Nets made from natural materials can be cast by hand from the shoreline or a boat to catch marine creatures of all shapes and sizes. Aborigines even drive fish into hand-sewn nets in more shallow water. The Ngarrindjeri, a tightly-knit group of 18 clans that occupy an area in south-central Australia, still use special nets made from bulrush-root fibers and the stems of sedges to catch certain fish.
Traps
- A report on the culture and fishing methods of Australians by CrystalLinks.com describes traps made of sticks and branches bound together with hand lines. Often constructed side-by-side to form a dam-like structure, these hand-made traps work in the same manner as pens made from rocks. These compartments sit below the water line at high tide, allowing fish to swim in and out of them at will, but as the water level falls fish become confined within the walls of these traps, making for an easy catch at low tide.

Artifacts