Fishing

That's a big one!

Fishing can be an integral part of your preparedness program. All the way from a way to augment grocery store shortages seen during covid up to a primary means of nutrition. Along with the spectrum of use, there's a huge list of ways to acquire them. Fishing rules/regs vary widely from area to area. Certainly take into account applicability of any laws in selecting your means of fishing. Almost regardless of laws, it makes sense to some means of fish acquisition in your plans. The conversation here isn't really on sportfishing or recreational fishing, lots of folks do that but for an emergency preparedness scenario, we'll focus on fishing for sustinance. No-one's preventing you from legally stocking up on fish from your local fisheries by recreational fishing ahead of time though. 

Trot Lines

Certainly one of the most effective low labor ways to acquire them is a trot line, which may or may not be legal in your area. Trot lines involve setting a line of hooks out in the water, leaving the string for a period of time, and coming back at some point, harvesting whatever fish might be on the line. The effort here is deploying the line and retreiving the line, allowing all the time in between to take care of other things.  This can be a low overhead preparation to make as all you need is some line, hooks, and bait. The whole setup can be stored in a low volume storage system. 

Contemporary fishing pole

Hook, line, and sinker, what a classic. Probably the first thing most folks think of when they hear the term fishing. This can be a great way to catch fish as well, but is more time intensive than trot lines or some other methods. For a lot of olks this will be an easy one, as they already have a pole, and baits. This can be a bit burdensome for preparedness, as fishing rods can break and reels can malfunction, they can be somehwat difficult to store and transport but generally not too bad. 

Single line without the pole

As with the fishing pole, bobber and worm type method, just a piece of fishing line and hook can be stored wherever needed and made to be a part of many different types of caches at a very low dollar expense and a very low volumetric organization expense.  This is certainly a very basic but effective place to start with your preperations. a few lengths of line, some hooks, some sinkers could easily be placed in a small container or baggie and kept in "every" survival bag, cache, bugout bag, vehicle. Everywhere. 

Cast Netting

Cast netting is another popular means of sustinance fishing around the world. One of the atractive parts is it can also be stored in a fairly small space, can generally be repared by hand, is durable, and can be deployed hearly anywhere. 

Sein Netting

Sein netting can be used to gather fish by using two people to walk a large linear style net through the water, collecting whatever fish might hit the net. Very effective at sustinance fishing, but generally needs 2 people. The net itslef could be packed into a small cache, making it good for storage. Generally a sein net requires a wooden pole on either end, but that can be covered by a couple of small downed trees or branches. 

Spearing

Spearing can be an effective way to acquire fish. I feel like it is much more labor intensive than other means of fishing unless you have a very high population of fish. Seems it would be much easier to set a trot line and come back in an hour than wait for a fish to show up to spear. However in a survival scenario it may get you by!