Sports Fishing:

Sports fishing is big game fishing which can be an expensive hobby, if you think of buying your own boat that has to be fairly a large one. The boat must remain stable while you fight with fish that can weigh as much as 500kg. Some use a charter service where the boat and equipment are hired. This has the advantage of an experienced captain at hand.

The most common fish caught are marlin, tuna, tarpon, sailfish, shark and mackerel. Fishing is mainly carried out in open sea. The hook line rod and reel is used to catch the fish. Many of the fish caught are eaten, but some are weighed, photographed and preserved as trophies. Some sport fisherman after catching fish, record vital statistics and fit them with identity tags and release them – this system is known as tag and release.

Fly Fishing:

The idea is to catch fish with manmade flies which are cast with a specially designed rod and fly line. The flies are made in different sizes, colours and patterns to replicate the natural food of the fish you are trying to catch.

There are various casting techniques, ie., dry fly fishing, where the fly is kept on the surface, and wet-fly fishing where the fly is below the surface.

Coarse Fishing:

Coarse fishing is purely for pleasure. However, there are angling matches where anglers gather at a venue to catch as many fish as possible in allotted time.

Coarse fishing targets include carp, pike, perch, ream, rudd, tench. There are two basic techniques – float fishing where the bait is suspended under a float and legering, where the bait is held on the river bed or lake bottom by a weight.

In Coarse fishing there is also specimen hunting where fishermen wait for days targeting a particular species to weigh and photographed.