From straight branches of bushes and plants growing near a pond, you can make the simplest homemade tops. First, the frame of the top is assembled from the prepared branches, consisting of 5 - 10 circles and 3 - 4 longitudinal poles. Circles are tied to poles using wire, fishing line, strips of fabric, bast.

The resulting frame of the top is intertwined with thinner branches so that the distance between them, depending on the size of the fish, does not exceed 1-3 cm. The entrance to the top is made in the shape of a funnel with a narrow opening-neck. The result is a kind of trap, repeating the shape of a sippy inkwell. The top is suspended from the inside on small leashes. The top is checked several times a day, the caught fish is pulled out through the untied blind end (Fig. 1).

There are several ways to make a funnel entrance to the top. Flexible branches of the longitudinal braid can be bent inward (Fig. 2), heated over a fire and tied to the entrance ring. Fragile branches that cannot be bent can be broken, but so that they are held at least on the bark, bent and again tied to the ring that forms the entrance of the top (Fig. 3). Finally, you can use thin poles with side branches equally cut off at the butt part, which, converging in the center, form a funnel (Fig. 4).

Making a triangular or oval top.

In the case when, when constructing a top, it is not possible to connect the rings that form its frame, you can make a simplified version of the top of an unconventional triangular or oval shape. To do this, you need to find and cut several poles (slingshots) of the same thickness and type, forked at the end. Then connect the diverging ends of the “slingshots” and tie longitudinal poles to the resulting elements of the transverse frame, which are then intertwined with thin branches (Fig. 5).

Homemade tops from the trunk of a hollow tree.

There is another top design made from the trunk of a hollow tree. Having found such a hollow trunk, you need to saw off a 1-2-meter log from it. The result is a hollow cylinder. One side of it must be braided with branches or covered with a piece of polyethylene or fabric. On the other side, at an angle of 30 - 60 degrees, drill or burn through holes into which to drive strong branches until the required size of the funnel is formed (Fig. 6).

Homemade tops from cans.

You can make a kind of funnel top from a 2-3 liter glass jar. To do this, you need to roll up a bag from a piece of leather, thick polyethylene, or birch bark, leaving a small hole in its lower part, insert it into the neck of the jar and secure it. The jar with the bait placed inside is placed on the river bottom with its bottom against the current and tied to a peg driven into the ground. The fish that notices the bait swims inside and finds itself in a trap (Fig. 7). When catching small fish, you can do without a funnel by stretching polyethylene or a piece of leather with a small hole in the middle over the neck of the jar and securing it at the edges with an elastic band or rope. It’s even more convenient to put a nylon lid on the jar and cut a hole in it. Such a flat “funnel” is also capable of holding fish caught inside.

Homemade top from a plastic bottle.

The tops are made using the same principle. To do this, its neck is cut off, which, upside down, is tightly stuck into the remaining “glass” and secured with wire, thread or thickly smeared resin (Fig. 8).

Catching minnows using bowls or jars.

Minnows can be caught using bowls or flat, 3-7 cm high, salted herring jars. The top of the bowl is covered with a cloth in which a hole the size of a walnut is cut. In this case, the hole should be located in the middle of the bowl. The ends of the fabric are secured to the edge of the bowl. A piece of bread or something else is thrown inside. The tackle is taken out to the riffle of the river and buried in the ground so that its top is at the bottom level. In just half an hour, up to two dozen minnows can be crammed into a bowl. You can catch minnows in much the same way using a bucket (Fig. 9). Fry can be caught with improvised nets made from parts of clothing or pieces of fabric.

Homemade nets for catching fish while surviving in extreme conditions.

In addition to the described tops and, ancient fishermen successfully used primitive gill nets woven from thin strips of bast taken from tree trunks. Gilled - because the fish, when caught in the net, became entangled in their gills. Clay balls or stones tied to the bottom of the net were used as sinkers. The net was installed across the current or along aquatic vegetation in places where fish accumulated. I’m not sure that modern “Robinsons” are capable of weaving a net from bast, but from more modern materials - why not?

You just need to have plenty of rope and patience. The required amount of rope can be obtained by unraveling a nylon rope, a towing end, or, using climbers' terminology, the main rope into separate threads. Thick nylon ropes are almost always woven from many individual strands, quite suitable for weaving nets. Methods of weaving nets are shown in Fig. 10, 11. The mesh size for nets is usually selected depending on what kind of fish the fisherman intends to catch. Most often it does not exceed 2-5 cm.

Fishing with nets has its own characteristics, which are best learned about in advance, and preferably not theoretically. On large bodies of water, the net is easiest to use as a drag net. To do this, it is necessary to go deeper into the water and stretch the net, move along the shore, gradually approaching it and bringing the ends of the tackle forward. Moreover, the higher the speed of the fishermen at the last stage of fishing - pulling the net ashore - and the more noise they make, driving the fish trying to escape back into the trap, the greater the catch promises to be.

One of the types of fishing tackle is tops, which were known back in Ancient Rus' (you can read about this in “The Wise Minnow” by Saltykov-Shchedrin). This tackle is made from willow twigs and has a frame cone-shaped design. In some regions of our country they call versha muzzle (has two entrances at both ends), and norotom, venterem, nersha.

The top does not allow the fish that has swum into it to get out, since the captive’s muzzle is stuck into the cone, and it cannot turn around and break free. Only crayfish can walk backwards. However, this tackle is also used for catching crabs.

In simple terms, a top is a bottom fish trap when there are no other ways to catch fish. Nowadays, in addition to willow rods, metal and nylon mesh are also used. The design itself resembles a venter or muzzle, but does not have a guide wing. This gear is usually used to catch perch, and in the Finnish northern rivers they practice catching lampreys.

Top fishing technique

Top traps are used with or without bait during the spawning period of fish. Large silver crucian carp can be caught using the trap we are considering with bait installed in it at the moment when it has just come out of hibernation. At this time, the fish are the most voracious, they flock together in schools, scour the reservoir in search of food and willingly go to the top in which the bait is placed. Up to fifty crucian carp can be crammed into the trap while the school is near the top. But after some time, without getting food for themselves, the rest of the fish leaves, and the trap can stand empty for several hours in a row.

Catching fish with the top using bait is not at all difficult. The trap is set either in thickets or between large stones and boulders. The bait is placed approximately in the middle of the structure. Feeling the smell of food, the fish is drawn there as if under hypnosis. The hole in the trap is made in such a way that it is impossible for the fish to escape; it gets stuck inside the top. But it is useless to place a trap with food placed in it in a clean and open place. The most catchy places are passages between large stones, a washed-out bank, thickets of aquatic plants, as well as narrow sections of streams and rivulets.

Fishing with a top in the spring and summer in spawning areas is perhaps the most effective. This is due to the fact that during spawning the fish are forced to accumulate, and they also need to rub against any hard objects, for example, stones, or dried reeds, etc. At this moment, the fish seems to squeeze caviar or milt out of its body.

With this method, you need to thoroughly study the habits of the fish you are planning to hunt, as well as the spawning site. For example, pike, bream and crucian carp go to spawn in shallow water, but finding a spawning area for perch or tench is problematic. Sabaneev, a famous classic fisherman, advised making dams for spawning using branches or stones. And then install it on the bottom. But Sabaneev himself believed that this method of fishing is almost barbaric, since it injures the fish and deprives it of the opportunity to reproduce.

The essence of top fishing in summer lies in the fact that the trap is placed with an open entrance against the current. The fish, walking after spawning, hits the top and gets stuck in it. It should be remembered that spawned fish are inactive, “in no mood,” and therefore you cannot do without bait here. Let's consider a method of catching crucian carp, for example, in a pond. In this case, dried bread or a roll, generously moistened with vegetable oil, works well as bait. If you don't mind, you can also use cream. The trap can be placed in any place you like. One way or another, a crucian carp that smells the oil will certainly go to the top. It is fair to say that in this case the catch will be unsatisfactory. To make fishing successful, you need to follow the following recommendations.

First of all, you need to choose the best place to fish. Such places inhabited by perches, pikes, and silver carp should be excluded. This can be easily explained by the fact that the silver carp is larger, so it will not hit the top, and besides, it is larger in number than the golden one. Therefore, you need to look for places where golden carp live.

To catch large-sized golden crucian carp, you need to use a top covered with a mesh, the cells of which are approximately 4–5 cm. The bait itself must be placed in a small bag, also made of mesh, but with smaller cells. This “vessel” must be placed in your trap so that the bait does not spread throughout the reservoir through the cells of the top. Bread or other grain products are used as bait.

To find the “right” fishing spot, you must first determine whether large crucian carp will bite here, and whether this place is its “dining table”. You can determine a potential feeding point before dawn using a traditional fishing rod. It is at this time of day that the big fish bite. The main thing here is not to oversleep the moment when the characteristic intense splashes of water and the so-called “smacking” of the fish will clearly be heard.

You don’t have to use “reconnaissance in force”, but simply install the tops between aquatic plants and water, at their border. But in this case, you won’t catch large specimens: large specimens simply do not fall into such traps.

Bottom tackle can also be used for catching fish in the river, and even fish that you did not expect to catch may end up in the trap. For rivers, top traps are used of a design that uses a mesh with miniature cells. At the outlet, a so-called plug valve is installed. A fine-mesh net is needed so that small fish can enter the top: it will serve as bait for large fish. A pike and perch entering a trap, for example, will eventually drive away the peace-loving fish. Some fishermen also use crumpled foil as bait. Perhaps this trick can also serve as bait for fish.

In conclusion, I would like to add that top traps make fishing itself a highly intellectual activity. And this type of fishing, most likely, cannot be compared with any other type. It is built on “misleading the fish”, deceiving it. When, as they say, “the eye sees, but the tooth numbs.”

The top is a fishing gear of the straining type, installed at the bottom of the reservoir. In fishing practice, there are several types and methods of fishing with tops:

• with and without bait;
• in summer and spring during spawning.

The first method is very simple: the top is installed on the bottom between stones or in thick algae. You can put bait inside the top. The fish follows the smell of bait and enters the hole in the chamber. The entrance hole is made at a special angle, so the likelihood of it coming back is very small.

The second is based on the fact that many fish need additional accumulation during spawning and look for hard objects to rub against them, squeezing out eggs and milk.

To achieve a good result, you need to know the body of water chosen for fishing, the behavior and habits of the fished objects. For example, fish such as pike, crucian carp, and bream spawn in shallow water and give themselves away with noisy splashes. Finding the spawning grounds of tench, lamprey and perch is much more difficult.

Fishing classic Leonid Sabaneev advised in such cases to create artificial spawning grounds from a pile of stones or branches and after that install a top in it.

Many supporters of sport fishing have the opinion that fishing with nets during spawning is detrimental to fish reproduction. On this issue, you can quote an excerpt from the book by L.P. Sabaneev “Fishes of Russia. Life and fishing of our freshwater fish”: “...Fishing during spawning is usually considered harmful for reproduction, but this opinion in reality - in practice - is not always true, and I think that there is no complete reason to unconditionally prohibit fishing during spawning. Only destructive fishing methods are always harmful - in spring and winter - when the fish are caught completely - adults along with small things and in cases where a significant part of the fish die simply in vain. Fish does not hatch children, does not feed them, the number of eggs is considered to be in the thousands and tens of thousands, and therefore protecting fish in the spring cannot have the same meaning as protecting four-legged and feathered game. The whole point is that some of the eggs are safely swept out, and therefore fishing before spawning is more harmful than after. Some fishing methods even have a positive effect on increasing the number of fish. So, for example, fishing with various top-shaped gear. Wooden tops themselves even act as bait for fish and create an artificial spawning ground, and a mass of young fish hatch from the eggs stuck to the walls of the top.”

What else can I add here? This is a completely comprehensive and reasoned opinion. However, let's get back to fishing with tops.

Fishing with tops on small rivers and streams has its own characteristics. The flood there is very rough, but the water subsides quickly, and it is very difficult for fish to find shores suitable for spawning, covered with vegetation and flooded with water. Very often, roach and pike spawn along washed-out steep banks, on the roots of trees and bushes hanging into the water. Such places are very convenient for installing the top - the tackle is not located close to the shore, but actually under it, and it is almost impossible to discover it by accident.

Another method of fishing in the spring is that the top does not attract fish as a convenient object for squeezing out eggs and milk, but stands in an open state in the mud of the fish migration.

The fish are very successfully caught where the river or stream narrows sharply. It is necessary to ensure that the top is not carried away by the current; to do this, the top is tied to a tree or to a stake driven into the bottom.

Double-entry tops are especially successful in catching. They can be aimed at both rising and falling fish.

Fishing with tops in the summer is usually carried out using a variety of baits.

If you choose a top with a minimum mesh mesh, then the small fish caught inside serves as bait for predators such as burbot, perch and pike. If you fish in a fast current, the bread bait is ineffective because it is quickly washed out by water. In stagnant water and low currents, if the top is checked less than once every two days, the bread sours and, on the contrary, scares away the fish. The most traditional and popular is the use of cake; in its absence, pieces of foam rubber soaked in oil.

In open and clean places, placing tops, even with bait, is not effective. The best places are dense water thickets, washed-out banks, narrow places in rivers and streams, and passages between boulders. All types of tops and hems can be purchased in our

Tackle for passive fishing - a fishing top - can be made with your own hands from any suitable material. You can quickly make it if you have a ready-made container for the case. When surviving in extreme conditions, it makes sense to spend a little time and make a trap using traditional technology.

The muzzle, venter, or top is a trap with a funnel-shaped entrance. A fish interested in the bait swims through a gradually narrowing tunnel and gets inside the body, where the bait lies. When trying to leave the container, the fish is no longer able to find the hole through which it entered.

When removing the tackle from the water, the fisherman can get the catch through another hole, which remains closed while the tackle is working. If the homemade top is made from a ready-made container (can, plastic bottle), then it is advisable to provide a funnel attachment that will make it easy to remove it when taking out the catch.

How to do it yourself?

Traditionally, willow or other thin and flexible branches were used to make the top. To weave a funnel, a ring with a diameter of 5-7 cm was made, on which a vine for the base was fixed. The base was braided with thinner strands, and it was given the shape of a funnel, expanding from the ring. Having made an entrance about 20-25 cm long, they began to weave the expanded upper part of the muzzle, spreading the warp rods to the sides and gradually bending them down.

The entrance funnel then ends up inside the wicker vessel, which again begins to narrow towards the top. In a simple method, the ends of the unbraided rods can be tied with a strip of strong bark or rope, closing the hole. In a more complex version, a ring of larger diameter was placed on this hole, and a lid made from a circle of thick bark or woven from a vine was attached to it. Similar designs are still woven in villages using wire.

From a plastic bottle

At a picnic by a pond, the muzzle can be easily made from scrap material using a water or beer container. The amount of fish that can be caught in 1 cast and the size of the crucian carp depend on its volume.

Cut off the neck of the bottle and part of the body at about 1/3 of its height. If necessary, you can also remove the screw part under the cover to slightly enlarge the hole. In 5-liter cylinders this can no longer be done.

Turn the cut part of the container over and place the neck inside the container. Connect the edges of the parts with wire. The fastening must be detachable so that the neck can be removed and the fish can be taken out of the trap.

From the air filter

You will need a large filter from a truck (most often they take an air filter from KAMAZ). Remove all filling from the mesh body. A cylindrical metal grid is well suited for quickly making a top with your own hands:

• cut out and fasten at one end a dense, blind cover made of tin or plastic, plywood, etc.;
• make a funnel for entering the trap from flexible sheet material;
• strengthen the funnel with the narrow end inside the mesh body;
• tie a rope.

With metal frame

Frame products will require the use of thick steel wire and material to cover the frame. Most often, nylon or plastic mesh with a fine mesh is used as covering. You can make a top on a frame with 1 or 2 funnel-shaped entrances:

1. Roll several rings of equal size from steel wire. Their diameter is chosen arbitrarily, but to catch large fish it is better to make the muzzle at least 30 cm wide. The length of the product depends on the number of rings; you can make 3-5 frame rings.
2. Make 1-2 small rings for the entrances from the same wire. Their diameter can vary between 5-10 cm, depending on the size of the desired prey.
3. Wrap the net around a large ring, leaving a free edge of about 20 cm in length. Tie the net to the ring with a slight overlap at the junction of the side edges. After 20-30 cm, also tie another 1-3 rings, and secure the last one at a distance of 20 cm from the edge of the mesh. You should get a soft cylinder with a loose mesh on the end sides.
4. Shape the edges of the net into a cone shape, laying several folds, and attach small rings to the edges.
5. Bend the tapered ends inside the body. To prevent the fish from swimming through the trap in a straight line, the entrances are shifted to the opposite sides of the venter, secured with leashes made of wire or fishing line.

If they make a top with 1 entrance, then the other end can be tied tightly so that the fish does not escape through it. The same principle applies to collecting crayfish, but making one side flat so that it fits better on the ground. The frame wire can be replaced with a plastic tube rolled into circles of the desired diameter.

Made from metal mesh

Another way to make a fishing top is to use a rigid galvanized mesh. From it you need to cut a rectangle, the width of which will be equal to the length of the future product. The length of the workpiece is selected so that it can be rolled into a cylinder with a diameter of about 30 cm.

Roll up the body of the top and connect the side seam using wire. Cut out a funnel from the same mesh, roll it up and secure it to the end of the mesh cylinder. The other end of the body is equipped with a lid that can be opened to remove the catch. Attach the rope.

Top fishing methods

Fishing for top fish can be done with or without bait. Fish can be attracted by the smell of food or the structure itself (during the spawning period). But for successful fishing you need to know how and when it is better to catch crayfish or crucian carp.

With bait

The feeding instinct forces the fish to dig into the most inconvenient places if it expects to get to the food. Lures that many breeds find attractive are placed in the muzzle: bread or dough flavored with vegetable oil, and sometimes with odorous substances (anise drops, perfume, valerian tincture, etc.). Potato peels, egg shells, dough are suitable. In addition to crucian carp, minnows and minnows are used for such bait.

They are caught with bait in the summer, throwing their muzzles into the shady corners of the reservoir. It is advisable to drown the top where the strip of coastal underwater vegetation begins. If it is possible to observe the reservoir during the morning and evening feeding of the fish, then the fisherman will be able to determine a more accurate location for casting the tackle: the tip is placed where the fish were playing.

You need to check the tackle several times a day, removing the caught prey from it.

Without using bait

Sometimes catching tops is possible even without using bait. The method without bait is used in the spring, when the fish goes to spawn and may find that such a convenient place is suitable for spawning. Different breeds of fish that prefer to spawn in thickets of plants can get into the snout at this time. The trap is placed where a concentration of crucian carp, bream, and ide is found. The spawning site is easy to determine by splashes of water.

On rapids, in small streams, venters are placed in a narrowing channel. Passing along the river, the fish is forced inside and cannot get out of the trap. With a little practice, you can determine the best way to place the top on the river: on the current or closer to the spawning grounds.

Disadvantages of top

Homemade fish traps (fish traps) are quite bulky structures. The folding version can only be made from wire rings or spirals covered with mesh, but other methods do not have this property.

The disadvantages include the difficulty of catching large fish.