Fishing lure guns?

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WestKentucky

WestKentucky

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I have keys enjoyed fishing and just like with guns I like to read and learn about the odd stuff people have tried that didn’t necessarily work. Apparently in the old days they had fishing lures equipped with live cartridges that when a fish pulled on the hook it worked like a trigger and shot the fish. Seems a very interesting bridge between the angling world and the shooting world. Has anybody ever seen one of these contraptions? I have heard of them and seen pictures, but have never actually seen one. Seems that maybe the percussion of a round might stun a fish, but I think they were designed to try and actually shoot a fish.
 
I remember as a kid, Musky fishermen generally carried a handgun in their tacklebox as there was no such thing as catch and release back then and the average boat was a 12' rowboat(row trolling). No one wanted a pissed off 4 foot fish with a mouth full of razorblades thrashing around in their little rowboat. Nor did we have the nets or the tackle we have now. You got 'em to the boat you shot 'em. Wasn't rare to hear shots ringing out when the fish were biting. Wasn't rare to hear of someone shooting a hole in their boat either. Nowadays, the idea of shooting into water on a lake with other boats and cabins on shore seems pretty foolish. Back then there were a lot of things that we did, that we now look back and just shake our heads.......
 
Since the part of fishing I enjoy is the battle between me and Mr. Fins after hooking him, killing him or stunning him and just reeling it in seems counter-entertaining. Buying the fishing gear, licenses, bait, etc and then spend hours to get to just crank in a somnolent or deceased fish, well, it would seem simpler to go to a good fish market and just buy the fillets. And that's talking bank or pier fishing, if you throw in a boat and all those related costs, it really makes the only positive part battling Mr. Fish.
 
buck460XVR said:
I remember as a kid, Musky fishermen generally carried a handgun in their tacklebox as there was no such thing as catch and release back then and the average boat was a 12' rowboat(row trolling). No one wanted a pissed off 4 foot fish with a mouth full of razorblades thrashing around in their little rowboat. Nor did we have the nets or the tackle we have now. You got 'em to the boat you shot 'em. Wasn't rare to hear shots ringing out when the fish were biting. Wasn't rare to hear of someone shooting a hole in their boat either. Nowadays, the idea of shooting into water on a lake with other boats and cabins on shore seems pretty foolish. Back then there were a lot of things that we did, that we now look back and just shake our heads.......
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Shoot him when you get him to the boat and not in the boat. Bailing isn't all that much fun.
 
FlSwampRat said:
Since the part of fishing I enjoy is the battle between me and Mr. Fins after hooking him, killing him or stunning him and just reeling it in seems counter-entertaining. Buying the fishing gear, licenses, bait, etc and then spend hours to get to just crank in a somnolent or deceased fish, well, it would seem simpler to go to a good fish market and just buy the fillets. And that's talking bank or pier fishing, if you throw in a boat and all those related costs, it really makes the only positive part battling Mr. Fish.
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Yea the sheer fun for me is hooking a 80 amberjack on heavy tackle and still have to spend 20 minutes back and forth til it tires out. Im addicted to hearing the drag whizzing away.
 
I’d like to see one on Forgotten Weapons. I’ve never heard of such a thing. Seems extremely dangerous!!

If you weren’t fishing for sport it seems net may be a better option.
 
WestKentucky said:
Seems that maybe the percussion of a round might stun a fish, but I think they were designed to try and actually shoot a fish.
Click to expand...

Liquid (water) isn't compressible like gas (air) so the concussive affect of a blast under water is going to be MUCH MUCH greater under water than in the air.

You don' have to hit a submarine with a depth charge to mess it up. Same concept for dynamite fishing. I would think that even a 22 lr shell going off with in a few inches of a fish would give it quite a stun! ...Equivalent to a good crack on the head with a stick at least.

To me there is a BIG difference between fishing for survival and recreational fishing... even for catching food.
 
I'm pretty much a professional fisherman (first job on a boat 1973, currently a full time guide down in the salt/brackish areas of the Everglades since 1996...) and I've never seen or heard of a lure that shoots back.... What I do know about and have used on more than one occasion is a 12ga. bangstick for big sharks.... Thank heavens that sort of stuff has long been out of favor since nowadays most practice catch and release for fish that aren't meant for the table..

At any rate the outfit that made the bang sticks we used was Pompanette (don't know if they're still in business but at one time they made pretty much everything needed for sportfishing boats - chairs, gaffs, etc.). The bang stick was on an an 8' aluminum pole that broke down into two pieces - each four feet in length and we mostly only used the four footer... The "powerhead" that came with it was brass and held a single 12ga. 2 3/4" shell - the part with the shell threaded onto a brass base that floated onto a spring loaded firing pin with a safety pin lanyarded to it so that you could load a shell and keep the powerhead safe until needed..

In use, the angler fights the big fish up to the boat where the mate (that was me all those years ago...) wires the fish by hand up to the transom or side of the boat (these boats were 45 to 55 feet long) and then grabbed the bang stick to pop the fish in the head before bringing into the boat... With really big animals I'd wire and the captain would come down off of the bridge to use the bang stick... Here's the hitch though... Yes, any shell (we used cheap low brass shells without regard to the size of the shot...) will kill a big shark -but... the actual result was that the fish was just stunned for about 30 seconds before it started thrashing around and snapping like mad - so that's the window we had to wrestle them into the boat for the taxidermist... After that all bets were off for about five minutes or so and the cockpit of that big sportfisher was no place to be at all... until the big animal quit kicking...

On one occasion the bang stick on one boat I worked out of was in poor condition and wouldn't fire when the captain poked it... and there I was hanging on for my life with an 8' hammerhead on the leader at really close quarters.... That didn't end well at all since we had to use a gaff and our hands to drag the 200lb animal aboard... not fun at all...

All these years later most that I know in the sportfishing world would never kill a big shark - and I'm very glad that's the case.. Back when I started we sure killed a bunch of them between seven and about eleven feet long day in and day out during the tourist season.... mostly within sight of Miami Beach.
 
lemaymiami said:
I'm pretty much a professional fisherman (first job on a boat 1973, currently a full time guide down in the salt/brackish areas of the Everglades since 1996...) and I've never seen or heard of a lure that shoots back.... What I do know about and have used on more than one occasion is a 12ga. bangstick for big sharks.... Thank heavens that sort of stuff has long been out of favor since nowadays most practice catch and release for fish that aren't meant for the table..

At any rate the outfit that made the bang sticks we used was Pompanette (don't know if they're still in business but at one time they made pretty much everything needed for sportfishing boats - chairs, gaffs, etc.). The bang stick was on an an 8' aluminum pole that broke down into two pieces - each four feet in length and we mostly only used the four footer... The "powerhead" that came with it was brass and held a single 12ga. 2 3/4" shell - the part with the shell threaded onto a brass base that floated onto a spring loaded firing pin with a safety pin lanyarded to it so that you could load a shell and keep the powerhead safe until needed..

In use, the angler fights the big fish up to the boat where the mate (that was me all those years ago...) wires the fish by hand up to the transom or side of the boat (these boats were 45 to 55 feet long) and then grabbed the bang stick to pop the fish in the head before bringing into the boat... With really big animals I'd wire and the captain would come down off of the bridge to use the bang stick... Here's the hitch though... Yes, any shell (we used cheap low brass shells without regard to the size of the shot...) will kill a big shark -but... the actual result was that the fish was just stunned for about 30 seconds before it started thrashing around and snapping like mad - so that's the window we had to wrestle them into the boat for the taxidermist... After that all bets were off for about five minutes or so and the cockpit of that big sportfisher was no place to be at all... until the big animal quit kicking...

On one occasion the bang stick on one boat I worked out of was in poor condition and wouldn't fire when the captain poked it... and there I was hanging on for my life with an 8' hammerhead on the leader at really close quarters.... That didn't end well at all since we had to use a gaff and our hands to drag the 200lb animal aboard... not fun at all...

All these years later most that I know in the sportfishing world would never kill a big shark - and I'm very glad that's the case.. Back when I started we sure killed a bunch of them between seven and about eleven feet long day in and day out during the tourist season.... mostly within sight of Miami Beach.
Click to expand...
That’s a heck of a memory to have. Seems likely fishing for a living isn’t nearly as fun as fishing for fun, but stuff like what you just described would never get old.
 
No big adventures when Pop used to take me salt water fishing off the NY coast on party boats..

I was nine or ten at the time. All we had were a bunch of heavy wooden hammers distributed around the boats to bash the sea robins to death with and throw the bodies back in the drink. I sometimes got the duty to bash and unhook a number of them. Nothing firearm related. I said New York, didn't I?

Terry, 230RN
 
230RN said:
No big adventures when Pop used to take me salt water fishing off the NY coast on party boats..

I was nine or ten at the time. All we had were a bunch of heavy wooden hammers distributed around the boats to bash the sea robins to death with and throw the bodies back in the drink. I sometimes got the duty to bash and unhook a number of them. Nothing firearm related. I said New York, didn't I?

Terry, 230RN
Click to expand...
sea robins are good eating, much better then any bluefish. I remember a cook from a boat telling me he would when he was a kid, walk the shore when the bunker run with a shotgun. He would shoot the bluefish when they ran the bunker up to on the shore.
 
Meeks36 said:
That's interesting never heard of them. I did have an idea to make a shootable bobber to get into deeper water from the bank. CO2 or a pump air rifle. Never got it off the ground for different reasons. Best idea is to have a remote control boat to go into the middle and drop your bait.
Click to expand...

When I was living on Kauai, me and my buddy would go down to the reef and fish. I would stick the hook in my swim trunks and go snorkeling out past the reef, then put some squid on the hook and let it go. A nice fish would bite and my buddy would reel it in.
 
Trey Veston said:
When I was living on Kauai, me and my buddy would go down to the reef and fish. I would stick the hook in my swim trunks and go snorkeling out past the reef, then put some squid on the hook and let it go. A nice fish would bite and my buddy would reel it in.
Click to expand...
I've seen people attach balloons to the line and wait for the wind to take them out.
 
Back when I first came to Florida, just back from Vietnam, 1971, the first kind of fishing I learned was off of piers on Miami Beach... When we wanted to fish for big sharks we’d have young kids on surfboards paddle our baits 100 to 200 yards offshore then drop them off. The baits were 5 to 10lb chunks of fresh bloody fish...

I figure those same kids would one day make great Marine recruits...
 
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