Otter fishing

Otter fishing is a fishing technique which uses trained otters to fish in rivers. This method has been practised since the 6th century AD in various parts of the world, and is still practiced in southern Bangladesh.

let us kill them all.
Piscator : No: I pray, Sir, save me one, and I'll try if I can make her tame, as I know an ingenious gentleman in Leicestershire, Mr. Nich. Segrave, has done; who hath not only made her tame, but to catch fish, and do many other things of much pleasure.

Otter fishing has been practiced historically in a number of regions including Central Europe, Northern Africa, the British Isles, Scandinavia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and China.

The earliest records of otter fishing are from the Yangtze region of China during the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) and was observed in the 13th century by Marco Polo on the Yangtze River. Otter fishing in China was practiced for subsistence and also collectively for profit. The Chinese reputedly learned the techniques from the fishermen of Southeast Asia. In India, otter fishing was practiced in the Indus and Ganges river basins, in Bengal and in South India along the Coromandel Coast.

Otter fishing was known in Europe from as early as the 16th century. The Scandinavians trained otters for catching trout. Olaus Magnus, the Archbishop of Uppsala, 1490-1557 published a tome in 1555, De Gentibus Septentrionalinus (History of the Northern Peoples), which includes a sketch of a fishing otter. One of the motifs of Magnus's 1539 map of Scandinavia, Carta marina, is an otter fetching a fish for its master, who is ready with a knife and a cooking vessel on the fire.

Fishing with otters was known in England, Scotland, Germany and Poland. The first mention of otter fishing in the British Isles dates to 1480, while the method for training otters is described in the 1653 book on angling by Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler. Individual sportsmen in the Americas and Europe have also used otters for sport fishing. British sportsmen who had served in South India during the early years of the Raj have been known to import this practice to their homes in Europe.

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