Fishing Tackle: What Is Sport Fishing?

When it comes to fishing, we generally divide it into 2 parts: the sport fishing and the commercial fishing. We know that commercial fishing means people catch fish and other seafood for commercial profit, there are many people make their living by commercial fishing. Then, what is sport fishing? What do you know about it?

Sport fishing also called recreational fishing, it is fishing for pleasure or competition. The most common form of sport fishing is done with a fishing rod, a fishing reel, fishing line, fishing hooks and fishing lures. Of course it has many other fishing tackles which we collectively call them the terminal tackles, for example, the sinkers, fishing float and fishing swivels.

It is hard to affirm the early evolution of sport fishing, but we can sure that the sport fishing took a great leap forward after the English Civil War, where a newly found interest in the activity left its mark on the many books and treatises that were written on the subject at the time. British fly-fishing continued to develop in the 19th century, with the emergence of fly fishing clubs, along with the appearance of several books on the subject of fly tying and fly fishing techniques, and this is start of the expansion period of sport fishing, and now, it becomes more and more popular all over the world.

If you want to experience the sport fishing, you should know the common game fish around us, here is a simple list:

Big game fish are bony saltwater fish such as tuna, tarpon, and billfish (sailfish, marlin and swordfish).
In North America, anglers fish also for common snook, redfish, salmon, trout, bass, pike, catfish, walleye and muskellunge. The smallest fish are called panfish, because they can fit in a normal cooking pan. Examples are crappies, perch, rock bass, bluegill and sunfish. Panfish are often hunted by younger anglers.
In the United Kingdom, "game fish" refers to Salmonids (other than grayling) – that is, salmon, trout and char. Other freshwater fish are called coarse fish.
Some popular game fish have been transported worldwide. Rainbow trout, for instance, can now be found nearly anywhere that the climate is appropriate, from their original home on the Pacific Coast of North America to the mountains of southern Africa.

In the past, sport fishers will always kill the fish they catch even they don’t eat them. But with the increase of the environmental protection consciousness of people, increasingly anglers practice catch and release to improve fish populations. Some game fish are also targeted commercially, particularly salmon.

As a popular game which has thousands of fans, sport fishing has it’s own conventions, rules, licensing restrictions and laws that limit the way in which fish may be caught. The International Game Fish Association (IGFA) makes and oversees a set of voluntary guidelines. The local government will help to put these rules in place.

There is no doubt that the sport fishing is an attractive game. And with the development of the technology, I believe the fishing tackles will become more and more advanced, and the sport fishing will become more and more challenging and humanized.