Teach a man to fish feed him for a Pocalypse.

Fishing

I hate fish. And seafood in general. Everything from the smell of it, fresh and cooked, to the taste and texture. I will willingly eat fried shrimp, but only because I love the taste of that tangy red cocktail sauce that comes with it. I can't imagine that much of that will be available when the endtimes arrive. But maybe I'm just a pessimist.

This sucks, because one of my favored plans(assuming I get the right skill set- more on that later) is to take to the oceans to survive. Zombies after all can't swim. The oceans are enormous, and easy to hide on. They have their dangers, storms, and rogue waves and pirates. Effin pirates. But they also have an abundance of available food(though most stocks have been vastly over-fished during the last couple centuries, so this may no longer be the case in 2012). With a proper solar still or a rig in the sails to catch rain, water is no problem either.

Fish, and seafood in general, is a high protein food, and much of the world relies on it to meet their nutritional needs. Humans, especially children need animal protein to develop properly as it is necessary for the building and repairing of muscle. It also provides substantial energy to fuel hard work and survival. The fats from animals such as fish have extremely high caloric intakes, which will help keep you alive in cold weather when the body needs to burn more fuel to remain warm. Accessing any source of protein will be important in a survival situation.

Vegans. Either learn to enjoy steak, or you're about fucked.

But you need to be able to get to all of that food(and be willing to eat it). So, we are at an impasse. But I will assume that I develop a taste for seafood, along with the ability to sail and navigate by starlight. I'll still need away to harvest that bounty. Let's stick with fish, as for clams and the like all you really need to do is hit the beach with a shovel and do some digging. Fish are a fair bit harder to bring in. Collecting shrimp and crabs can be even more difficult.

Really, as Les Stroud has demonstrated more than once, pulling fish out of the sea can be vastly difficult in a survival situation. Oceans, and even rivers and lakes, are large spaces. And the fish therein are finite in number. Maybe you'll get lucky and maybe you won't.

There are three or four general ways to approach fishing. There's angling, which is the classic rod and reel variety. I've done a fair share of this, having grown up in Alaska with a family who loved the outdoors. It takes a fair amount of knowledge, special equipment and skill to prove effective. Spear-fishing would be the second that comes in mind. The name should be enough of a description. Then there's net-fishing. Where one drags a net through the ocean, either by hand or using heavy machinery, and then collecting whatever the net manages to capture. I've done one variant of this as well, called dip-netting, and it's exhausting work for high risk. Finally, you can go the route of the trap such as a fishing wheel. This is popular with native subsistence fishermen along the Yukon and other Alaskan rivers.

I mentioned that fishing with the Rod and Reel method takes some specialized equipment, notably the rod and reel. But in honestly it can be affected with just a sapling and some line. Which are both usually easy to come by. Hooks can even be made from found objects. This method is primitive and limits your options for how you can approach fishing. With the sapling, you're stuck with the baited hook method. You bait the hook while hoping and waiting. Great, if you're a lazy redneck trying to piss away a hot summer afternoon. Not so much so if you're trying to gather food to survive. With modern equipment, you not only have the aforementioned option, you can also employ a variety of flies and lures. As you drag them through the water to entice the fish to strike. You are in effect bringing the food to the fish, rather than waiting for the fish to find the bait. With the right lure and a reasonably stocked stream, this is very effective, and a lot of fun. But it does require some knowledge and technique. Trying to hook coho salmon during a spawning run, using earthworms as bait just isn't going to work. Save the worms for largemouth bass. Here's an excellent source for tips on approaching various types of fish.

Spear fishing. You take a spear and try and use it to stab the fish. Yes, I am known to the world at large as Captain Obvious. Spear fishing requires that you goto the fish, and that you're able to see them and get close enough to strike. So generally, it's easier to do from a boat or through the ice. I guess in this direct manner, one can even lump in the act of climbing into the water and scooping fish out onto the bank with your bare hands, a technique that is sometimes called Noodling in the South. For large game, you can even employ a bow with special barbed arrows. This method is quite popular in the south when hunting the various species of Gar(usually a sport fish as I don't believe that anyone eats them, they have the same overblown reputation as Sharks for being dangerous man-eaters).

Net fishing. Assuming this is the proper term, is how most commercial fishing is done these days. You take a net and try to scoop up passing fish. Sounds really easy. If the water happens to be clear and shallow and teaming with life, then it is. Else, it's rather laborious. Why do you think the Jesus so easily lured a half dozen fishermen away from their jobs to go follow him through the desert for three years. And then when he was executed they were like “Damn it, guess we're gonna have to go back to fishing again!” According to one ancient Egyptian writer, the fisherman career path was the most dangerous a young man could choose. Not only would you be out on the water in a tippy boat, but you would also be swarmed by insects and there was the constant worry of a crocodile turning you from predator to prey. In Alaska, replace Crocodile with Bears. In Alabama, replace Bears and Crocodile with Horny Drunken Redneck. From the small scale guy in his canoe near his village, or even from the shore, to the industrial trawlers scraping the ocean clean of life. The trawler method isn't too practical for loners. Really, none of it it practical if you don't know what you're doing. Where the other methods are generally aimed at getting one fish at a time, using a net can be much more efficient and effective. Each cast can potentially bring back

Using a fish trap, takes the most work, at least up front. After the trap is constructed and put into place, then it tends to be automated. Basically, the fish trap is a large paddle wheel that spins with the current and then scoops up whatever happens to pass underneath. I've seen them used on rivers to harvest salmon, and when the run is in, they are highly effective. This – explains the concept quite well. They even have a picture. Since the wheel is powered by the river, after the wheel is in place, the human element only needs to be around to collect and clean the catch. The downside is that the wheel takes a lot of work to build. And once you have built it, it requires that you stay in one place. A large paddle wheel floating on a river would be difficult to hide and thus conceal your tracks from unwanted visitors. But there are always trade-offs for every technological advantage.

With the demise of humanity, the world's stressed fishing stocks should bounce-back, leaving the rivers, lakes and oceans to once again team with life. All you need to do is be able to reach in and pull them out.