Fishing For Food

On the way home from the hospital yesterday, we came upon some people fishing along the main highway.

This is the same area where I had photographed a woman fishing using a dip net in July. The area is a flood plain that fluctuates in depth with the seasons. The water was quite high in the period from July to October - our rainy season. Now the water has receded quite a bit although we did get a small shower today - our first rain in a very long time.


For the past two weeks people have been busy cleaning up the dry brush and weeds from the drainage ditches and puddles of this flood plain. People have been installing and repairing the various fish fences placed in the water. The fish fences are constructed out of wood sticks driven into the mud with blue monofilament netting attached to the sticks with string. The fish fence is not directly involved in capturing the fish but serves to restrict their movement and concentrate the number of fish in a specific area. Dip and hand nets are then used to catch the fish in the concentrated areas. I suspect that the cleaning of the low areas and installation as well as repair of the fences is in preparation for the upcoming rainy season.

We had stopped earlier in Kumphawapi for Duang's son-in-law to buy a new hand net for his parents. It seems that everyone is getting into fishing this month. The large dipping nets have been basically idle since the end of November but the bamboo structures associated with the dipping nets remain in place. At certain points the area looks like a fishing camp with the number of platforms and suspended nets in place.

Fishing nets are readily available in the many small quasi-hardware shops in the villages and towns of Isaan. Some of the nets are very fine as in delicate. They appear to be made out of 4 to 6 pound test nylon thread. There is no need for heavier material because the fish that are caught in the nets are essentially minnows - the bait sized fished that we called "shiners" back home.

Today Duang's mother sent some food to the hospital to feed us. Of course there was sticky rice for all. Along with the rice she had made a soup out of vegetables and fish. The fish were about the size of bait fish back home or fish in your home aquarium - no more than 3 to 4 inches long from the tip of their mouth to the tip of their tail fins. With such small fish you might wonder how difficult it is to clean them for eating. There is no problem at all in cleaning them - you don't. The fish are cooked as they were caught. People use a metal spoon to scrape the flesh off of the body to eat.


With the lower levels of water essentially creating mud holes, the fishing strategy has changed to using hand nets rather the dip nets. The people get into the muddy water which is up to their waist and cast a large net on the water. They appear to be using the fish fence as a barrier to work their net against. The hand net sinks and the people get down almost on all fours in the water working the net to see what it has fallen on top of. The fish are captured by hand and placed in a home made creel made out of small diameter sticks. The people were having pretty good luck yesterday - catching some "big" ones - up to 9 inches long.


There is at least one tackle shop that I know of here in Udonthani and there are a couple of booths where you can buy some rods and reels. Fishing here is more of a food gathering process than a sport. As such, nets are much more efficient than a hook and line.

Sport fishing is not luxury that is within the reach of Lao Loum farmers here in Isaan.