METHODS OF FISHING 
The student of fishes and of fisheries is also much interested in the methods by 
which fishing is done. Radcliffe rightly remarks that there is little information to 
be had concerning Peruvian fishing before the Conquest. The writings of the 
Conquistadores and their more literate companion Church Fathers are devoid of 
allusions to this and to other ethnic matters. Their mission was rather to learn 
what was wrong with the native ways of life and to reform them. It is doubtful 
if many unique, indigenous fishing practises survive without change to our day, 
except among the most isolated tribes of the tropical forests of the far interior. 
Among various practises it may be impossible wholly to determine which are 
native to the country. It is highly probable that certain methods have evolved in 
various parts of the world independently, and some of them are no doubt the com- 
mon inheritance of various peoples from before their present distribution about 
the earth. The blow-gun as a hunting weapon was invented among the tribesmen 
of both hemispheres; why not also the throw-net? Of methods in use in central 
South America, we have an excellent list from Haseman (1911¢). 
I often found my own equipment inadequate for certain fishes or certain 
localities, and was obliged to resort to local assistance. The people frequently 
considered my gear a joke. 
Net-fishing has taken various forms in South America, but in the interior 
seems nowhere the principal dependence, as in other parts of the world. Except 
in marine fishing large nets are almost unknown, although, as described by Ogilvie 
(1922, 165) seines are employed to some extent in Lake Titicaca, operated from 
balsa to balsa. In the lowland streams of the interior, my seines were rapidly 
cut to pieces. Gill-nets would be destroyed in a single setting, and most fishes 
caught in them eaten by predators. In mountain streams no form of net could be 
operated among the rocks. Tolten, however (page 255), alludes to the use of 
large nets for shoals of tratra, and Up de Graff finds the Antipas fishing with nets 
of fiber, having floats of balsawood. 
The throw-net Is a special type of netting practised here as in many parts of 
the world. The inhabitants construct their own from cotton fiber, using various 
names for them, Paez calling them tarraya, elsewhere known as iarafa. The 
Peruvians were much interested in mine, scorning the pocket, or bolsilla around 
the margin. 
In the Lima region with only the pejerrey and the camerones available, the 
local fishermen work upstream among the rocks with a small semicircular dipnet 
formed on a bow-like frame. This is pushed ahead, flat side down, held against 
the knees, while the fisherman reaches upstream, turning the rocks, the current 
sweeping his catch into the net between his feet. 
For work among the pondweed in the Rio Have, I found a local custom of fish- 
25 
