Handline Fishing at Anchor .... A Beginners Guide For The Really, Really Lazy

Buy a hand line and get fishing. That's my advice. Hand lines are cheap – you can even make one yourself. But first consider how you're going to use it. For you are about to engage in an enthralling struggle between creatures of great intelligence (ourselves) over a multitudinous prey with hardly a brain cell to share between them (the fish, that is). It doesn’t seem really fair, does it? Such an absurd mismatch. Our intellectual magnificence pitted against creatures so unbelievably dim that they don’t even know what day of the week it is, even if they confer or phone a friend.

So, if they are so stupid how come we catch so few of them?  Well, I have to tell you that this bothered me for some time. My perspective involved abandoning my simple hand line and shelling out loads of dough on spangly bits of tackle that I’m told would swing the balance of power my way. Absolutely, sir. Take my word for it. Well, I have to tell you that I waited a long time.

But not inertly. I sought advice from my old pal Dick McClary, contributor to this site and author of the truly wonderful RYA Fishing Afloat handbook. When facing a pitiless enemy, I asked him, what should I do?

He thought about it awhile until (just before I thought he’d either given up or was falling asleep) he growled: ‘Think like a fish.’

Now, I’ve suspected for some time that he was a couple of fairy lights short of a Christmas Tree, but never suspected that he could wind down his mental processes to the brightness of, say, an unnamed dot in the Crab Nebula. But, respecting him for his undoubted expertise, let alone his mind control, I left to ponder his advice … and almost immediately gave up.

And replaced previous strategies with pure reason.

Since I was having only sporadic luck against the wilier Piscean foes, I decided to turn my attention towards those fish who were so profoundly dim-witted as to almost heave themselves onto my hooks. Mackerel for instance. They are to brainy what Hannibal’s elephants were to ballet.

Unfortunately, the mackerel we love and eat are in short supply in the eastern Mediterranean and, anyway, their somewhat oily flesh doesn’t exactly suit the climate. At this time I should mention that I haven’t actually given up on fishing as a sport. It’s just that it would be nice if it was just a bit more dependable in the culinary department.  

Bingo!

It was then that someone mentioned banded bream, smart looking pan-sized fish, decked out in silver livery with natty cummerbunds around their tails. Some have two bands and are called … wait for it! … two banded bream. I told you we were intellectually gifted.

Catching banded bream is best done at anchor in clear, shallow water. All you need is a light hand line and a small hook – Size 10 will do fine. No swivels. No weights. Nothing else except a few pellets of stale bread crust or cheese or both – bream fancy the occasional ‘ploughman’s’. Windless dawns and dusks are the best times to fish and the locals recommend the full moon period.

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Oh, and I forgot. It helps to have a glass of wine handy in case the excitement gets too much for you.