Continuing on from the last post on the Fisherman of Hoi An from my Photographic tour of Vietnam and cambodia…
The Art of Fishing
As we continued down the river we started coming to more and more of these huge fishing nets suspended between 4 poles, they were beautiful, more like a work of modern art than a fishing net. Since they were suspended horizontally across the water it was difficult to see how they were used to catch fish… unless they were flying fish!
Patience is rewarded, and after passing many of these mysterious nets we finally got to see one in action. The fisherman appears in his canoe, standing up and rowing with a single sculling oar, sometimes with his foot… which is an impressive sight.
He paddles up to a small covered platform on stilts off one corner of the net, climbs in and begins peddling a type of windless contraption made of bamboo which winds in a rope attached to one of the four corner posts.
The whole net arrangement tilts sideways and is lowered into the water until it’s completely submerged. Later on that day he comes back and repeats the whole process, but winding in reverse, which of course raises the net, hopefully with a heap of fish in it.
At this point all the seagulls have a party as the net is completely open at the top and provides an easy meal. The fisherman then gets back into his canoe and paddles under the net, and using a long stick and his hands – while controlling his canoe with his foot – shakes all the fish down from the edges into the middle of the net, where there is an access hole for him to get them out into his boat.
All these images were shot on the Hasselblad H4D-60 with either the 100mm f2.2 lens (35mm equivalent of about 70mm) or the 28mm f4 (35mm equivalent of about 18mm), hand held of course, as there is no point in using a tripod on a boat!
Don’t forget to click on the images for a much better view of whats going on! More Hoi An fishing stories next…
