Vocabulary: Fishing – JSS1 English Lesson Note (Third Term)

Fishing vocabulary is the set of words anglers use to talk about catching fish. It covers equipment such as reels and bait, actions such as casting and bagging up, and places such as the bank and the backwater. This note lists fishing words beginning with A and B, with a meaning for each.

Behavioural objectives

By the end of the lesson, students should be able to:

• state the meaning of fishing words beginning with A and B;
• name the different kinds of bait and fishing equipment listed;
• explain what an angler does when bagging up, bank fishing and balling up;
• use the new words correctly in sentences.

Fishing words beginning with A

• Aquaculture: the controlled cultivation and harvest of aquatic plants or animals such as edible marine algae, clams, oysters and salmon.
• Arbor: the centre of a centrepin reel’s spool. The arbor can also be a knot.
• Arbor knot: a knot used for tying backing to the arbor of the fly reel.
• Arlesey bomb: a pear-shaped lead weight developed by the late Dick Walker and used for fishing.
• Artificial baits: lures or flies made of wood, plastic, metal, feathers or similar inert material.
• Attractor: an additive used with the bait or mixed with the groundbait. Flavour attractors can be sweet or spicy.

Fishing words beginning with B

Bait and baiting

• Bait: anything used on the hook to entice and capture the fish.
• Bait band: used with boilies, pellets and similar baits. A small elastic band is wrapped around a bait and the hook is passed under the band or nicked through it, so that the bait hangs from the side or the base of the hook. Bait bands come in a variety of sizes to suit different-sized baits.
• Bait box: a box used for carrying bait such as maggots.
• Bait clip: a clip that holds the baited hook during the cast.
• Bait dropper: a device used to put hook bait samples down to the bottom of your swim. It is a cage with a door on the side, held closed with a latch. When it is lowered to the bottom, the latch is pushed up and opens the cage door, letting the bait fall out.
• Baitfish: any fish that is the primary prey of a larger fish.
• Bait needle: a needle that has had one side of the eye removed, making a small hook. To bait a hair rig, put the boilie or other bait onto this needle, hook the hair rig loop onto the needle and pull the bait off the needle onto the hair rig line. Then put a bit of grass or boilie stop through the loop to hold the bait on, pull the bait down to it and you are ready to go.
• Baitwell: a special well in a boat that holds the bait.
• Balling up: throwing lots of balls of ground into your swim, for example at the start of a bream fishing session.

Reels, lines and casting

• Back shot: a piece of shot placed on the line behind a sliding leger or feeder, or behind a float to help keep it steady in windy conditions. It is placed about a foot away from the float tip and is usually a piece of shot from the float rig, so it does not sink.
• Backcast: the casting of a line in a direction opposite to the direction the fly is intended to go. The backward counterpart of the forward cast bends the fly rod, setting up the conditions to generate the forward cast and present the fly.
• Backing line: old line or string padding attached to a reel to fill up the spool before the line is attached.
• Bail arm: the wire part of a fixed-spool reel that guides the line on the spool.
• Baitrunner: used especially by carp or specimen anglers, this is an open-faced reel with a rear drag system and a lever at the back. A hooked fish can pull line off freely, and when the lever is activated the normal drag mechanism is engaged.
• Ball bearings: small metal balls added to the mechanism of high-quality reels to make the retrieve smoother. Normally, the more ball bearings a reel has, the higher its quality.

Boats, floats and other equipment

• Bait boat: a remote-controlled boat used mainly by carp anglers or specialist anglers to place a baited rig and loose feed, such as boilies, accurately at distances that cannot be reached by casting.
• Balsa: a type of wood that floats used to be made of, and still are in some cases. Several lures are also made from balsa wood, which is very light yet highly buoyant.
• Bankstick: a straight rod that is pointed at one end and threaded at the other. The point is pushed into the ground, and a rod rest, keepnet or bait alarm is screwed into the threaded end.

Places, catches and rules

• Backwater: an area of a river that is sometimes isolated.
• Bagging up: catching lots of fish during a fishing session.
• Bag limit: a fishery restriction on the number of fish that an angler may keep, on a per-trip or daily basis. It is generally applied to trout. Also known as creel limit.
• Bank: the ground next to a body of water.
• Bank fishing: fishing from the bank of a river, lake or other water, as opposed to fishing from a boat.

Evaluation

1. What is aquaculture?
2. What is the difference between bait and artificial baits?
3. What does an angler do when bagging up?
4. What is a bait box used for?
5. How is bank fishing different from fishing from a boat?

Use a dictionary to find more fishing words.

Assignment

Choose five words from the lists above. Write the meaning of each word, then use each one in a sentence of your own.