Well it’s been a quiet couple of weeks from me during constantly interrupted internet service. Of course, this has been a good thing, with less of my time earmarked on the computer and more of it actually doing things outside. With the longer days I’ve dragged my feet inside at dusk and actually balked at how LONG the days have become, testament to hours of outdoor labor (gardening, chicken wrangling, bike riding, fight mediating). But we’re back online now and the Sicore boys are asking me to take them fishing so you can guarantee a few posts coming in that flavor.
If you plan on spending the summer fishing, then you ought to have a good hand net. And if you follow nobody’s advice but Beard’s and mine, you’ll go ahead and make your own. Because you CAN! And because they look pretty cool. And because you are an original. And because you have lots of spare time on your hands. Right?
Making your own net is an exercise in meditation. You practice a skill used by the Egyptians, later adopted by the Hebrews (and so on to the Industrial Age), that enabled men (before any factory children in China could show them better) to collect food from the water. With your own hands you craft a network of fibers that captures the water’s profit after all deductions slip through: the fish.
So, as a test run, Chas and I spent an afternoon with a ball of wool, a forked Eucalyptus branch and a pocketknife.
Don’t expect your kids to sit down and make one of these, either. But you can embrace it, yourself!
“Go Mommy Go!”
And go I went. Tying lengths of yard in one-inch intervals around the perimeter of the forked end. Like this:
And then tying each strand together, going all the way around (and so on), like this:
To finish it (by gradual decreasing–cutting off equidistant strings gradually) like this:
And while it may not yet be a true fishing net (I used WOOL?!?), it served as egg conveyor from coop to fridge the rest of the afternoon:
Now it awaits the weekend, when we can go fishing for real:
Who’s ready to go fishing besides us?
and follow the adventure:
I came across this site and post through Twitter. What an exciting find! Your article has me wanting to go home and make some fish nets with my son. Thank you for sharing.
Nicholas
I’m very impressed and being part of a fishing-mad family I have to say that being able to tie a net is an important skill. And yes, I predict a fishing trip in our near future.
that is so cool. thank you for sharing that.
Seth has been inviting friends to go fishing left and right so perhaps the Sicores can come with the net!
Impressive! Very cool.
[...] we took that handmade net with us fishing last weekend in Elkhorn Slough, just in case we needed it. I took an obligatory [...]
this is mighty cool. my daughter’s just 3.5, but i think she would really like to make one of these in a couple of years. she’d like the finished product now.
What a great idea for a site! I found this while looking for some directions on how to make an very open lace pattern for a necklace design, and then I realized that what I wanted was kind of like fishing nets…and thus I arrived here. Your photos showed that I need to refer to my American Boy’s Handybook (which I have…) and make myself a net from there. Cool!