Willow Fish Trap by Pondguru

Well, this has been a hell of a long time coming. I'm gonna attempt to make a fish trap out of purely natural materials. I'm not even gonna use string or any sort of bindings. I'm purely going to use willow. Here we've got loads of willow in my garden. It grows all over the place around the pond because I planted it there, and I harvest it every year, moving it to other places, making little retaining walls like this. And it just goes berserk. It grows in practically any condition, but it does best in the damp conditions. And there's plenty of damp conditions around this pond. So I'm just going to cut some of this, and this is what I'm going to use to make the fish trap. When willow has been managed properly, it does tend to grow very, very straight. This is what it's put on just this year. Maybe five, six feet long. Some of them are even bigger, from the bigger stumps. But these are going to be perfect. That gives us almost like a little flexible cane. And that's going to be very, very good for forming our fish trap. Perhaps the easiest way to strip all of these leaves off is just to hold it at the top, put your finger and thumb around the stem, pull down like that. Strips them all off in a second. So I'm going to do that with all the bits that I've got, and then I'm going to make some rings. There you go. You can tie it in knots. And that's made quite a strong little ring. What I'm going to do is make some more rings of various sizes, and then I'll show you what I'm going to do with them. Just a very quick note here, don't for one second think that I'm telling you the definitive way to make a fish trap. I'm not. I'm literally just winging it. I know roughly how to make one, I've never made one successfully, but I have a few new ideas and I'm going to implement them in this video. So stick with me, it may work, it may not work. There will be some editing as well, because there will no doubt be some swear words at the points where it doesn't work. But I've got a fair idea, and I'm really looking forward to making this. Like I said before, I'm really just making this up as I go along. I've got a few different sized rings done, those things. They're going to come into play in a minute. But what I've got here is a reasonable bundle of possibly about 20 pieces of reasonably long willow. This is the narrow end. I'm going to bend that over. And then I'm going to bind that with more willow, and that'll give me the pointy end of the fish trap. And then I should be able to open these up around the rings to create the actual shape of it. Remember, I did say I'm not going to use any string or wire or anything like that. This is going to be all 100% natural. So if you're out in the wilds and all you can find is willow or other bendy sticks, you'll be able to do this as well. Look how bendy that is. That's given me a little loop to attach a piece of cord to, or a bit of string or whatever, to remove the trap from the water. On the thicker ends, we've got all different lengths sticking out here. So I'm going to trim that off so they're all the same length, which will be 3 foot 6 to 4 feet. I could just weave willow in and out of all of these different pieces, gradually building up like a cone shape. But I'm going to use these hoops to try and speed it up and make it a little bit easier. Hopefully it will make it easier. I've slid it back so it's about 20 centimetres, 8 inches, away from the tie-off point here. And I'm going to try and spread all of these straight lengths out around it, reasonably evenly. And in order that they don't fall off, I'm going to employ the services of some very small, fine pieces of willow. Yeah, and I'm basically just going to go around these straight lengths, lashing them on. I'll try and get a close-up so you can see exactly what I'm doing. There you go. It's looking reasonably neat and it's holding them in very well. If I go all the way around the outside doing the same, I should have a quite a solid back end to this trap. And when this becomes too thick to do anything with, I'm just going to wrap it around the back end of the trap just to get it out the way. There you go. It's tied up out the way. Now I'll get another piece and I'll continue going all the way around. That looks okay. I'm pleased with that. So I'm going to put a bigger hoop in here And do exactly the same. I'll show you that when I'm finished. You know exactly how to do it now because I've shown you how to do this one. So the middle hoop's going to go in and then I'm going to put a hoop at the end as well. And that's going to be the open end to our fish trap. Well, there's the last one in. And it's adopted that classical fish trap shape. Now that's where they're going to go in. There is some bits sticking out here. If they're quite long, I'm just going to bend them back and wrap them around ourselves just to tidy them up. If they're quite short like that one, I'm just going to cut them off. Now all I'm going to do is weave little bits of willow over and under, over and under, spiralling all the way around here just to close up all of these gaps. I'm going to work on this bit first, get this finished, and then I'm going to make a funnel for the end. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to make that funnel, but I'm sure inspiration will grab me before I've finished closing up all of these gaps. Well, that came out pretty well. That's the main body of the trap made and I'm over the moon with that. I really, really am pleased. It looks good and it feels really, really strong. Get in there. What I need to do now is make a funnel that'll fix somehow against here, but allow fish to get in through a small little hole and not allow them to get back out. So what I've done is I've made another loop which is just smaller than the diameter of this. And I've got some really thin pieces of willow, and I'm just going to wrap those around here very, very tight to make this exceptionally strong. Then I'm going to move on to the next stage. It's almost like vines wrapped around there. Really, really malleable, very, very strong. So that's going to be our main loop for the funnel. And I need to make a smaller one as well. Where will that one sit? Yeah, I need to make a smaller one that's going to sit. Maybe eight, nine inches back from that and then I'll put the various pieces of willow and weave it all together. Hopefully it'll work. Now it's quite a big trap so possibly I could get quite big fish in there. I think I'll go for yeah that sort of size, roughly three inches. Basically just going to wrap it round and round and round and round on itself to make another ring. I'm going to use another two or three bits, bind that as well, make that really strong, and then I'll start putting the thing together. So now we just need to join this to this with more willow. I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. But my idea here is, using this big ring and some other small pieces of willow, shove through wherever is convenient, like that, all the way around. I can then, hopefully, wrap them round there and bind them. back onto themselves to create the funnel. I'm not sure whether that'll work though, I can't see why it wouldn't, that might just look like a right old mess to you, but that seems to be shaping up quite nicely as far as I can see it. So what I'm going to do is stitch these fellas on, again using thin willow, cross just like I did when I was tying in the very very first loops. So I'm going to plug this in somewhere and wrap it round and round and cross over, tie all these in very tightly and try and point them into some sort of funnel shape. Well, it hasn't really formed a funnel shape, but that's tied those in really, really tight. That's good. I'm pleased with that. We've got numerous little ends sticking through here, so I'm just going to cut those off and leave about a centimetre, which is about half an inch or so. Just to tidy them up, and that'll allow me to stand this up whilst I try and fit the small end of the funnel. Okay, ideally I want that to sit bang in the middle, about there. Or maybe it's about there. About nine inches up. So these rings are approximately nine inches apart. I'm thinking if I lash these back to themselves, it should eventually make this quite strong. You can kind of see what's happening there. And if I can repeat that all the way around, it should have a really strong frame to build on. Well, it's not going to win any beauty contests. And I did cross over a few of these, so it looks a little bit cock-eyed. But that's basically what I was after. Big end, small end. Fish go in there, can't get back out easily. Obviously, this isn't finished yet, but here's the idea. That'll sit inside of there. See? Proper funnel. Very pleased with that. There's loads of usable space. to trap fish and other creatures inside this basket the last thing you want to do i imagine is make this really long and take up all the space inside your basket you know so i'm pleased with that i'm going to get a load more small pieces of willow weave them in and out of here you've seen me doing that probably is too long on the main structure of the thing so i won't video that i'll just video this when it's actually ready well that's the funnel done I'm pleased with this bit as well, I'm pleased with this bit, I'm pleased with the main bit. If it catches fish, I'll be doubly, triply pleased. Yeah, that's not too bad. There is gaps around the outside, but what I'm going to do is use willow and just gently lash that on, just to hide these little gaps. Keep this secure, because the last thing I want is when I lift it out, hopefully full of fish, for all the fish to drop out, because this drops out into the pond or the river. I'll lash that on, and then we'll be done. Look at that. Absolutely loving it. That's a proper big fish trap. Behind me, I've got a proper big pond. I'm going to drop this in later tonight, check it in the morning, and you'll see the results. Super, super pleased with that. I'm not going to put any bait in, I'm just going to assume that there's no bait available, so we'll see what happens. Now as far as dropping it in the pond goes, I'm still going to assume that there's no rope, no string, no anything artificial available. I'm going to purely use willow, so I'm going to make like a little chain link handle here and that will allow me to remove it safely without any chance of losing it. I've spent maybe about four hours building this thing. The last thing I want to do is chuck it away. Here we are, next morning, moment of truth. Because I kind of stitched the funnel on with more willow, I'm just going to cut that off and I'll let you see what's inside. These are just some stones that I put in because it was floating when I first put it in. Seven crayfish, that's with no bait and the trap was only left overnight. I'm sure if I put a little bit of bait in here, this would have been full. Really, really pleased with that. Excellent, get it. Well, there you go. I'm ecstatic about that, I'm really, really pleased. Took me about four hours. There's a lot of footage to edit for this video, so it's probably gonna take me about four hours to edit it, but really, really pleased, really pleased. It looks good as well. Thinking of how I would have done things differently next time probably would have incorporated a handle on the top instead of on the back. Just would have made it easier for lifting in and out of a river or a pond. Oh we can't leave it there we've got to catch more than that so this time I'm going to bait the trap. Now I know there's crayfish in here because we've already caught some so I'm going to use half a squirrel that my cat's very kindly left for me, get that dropped in there, chuck this fella in the pond. Let's see what that can do. I'll leave that in overnight, and hopefully it won't be raining in the morning when I come to check it. Well, it's the next day. Late morning, and up until about two seconds ago the sun was out. Seems like every time I start filming the sun goes in. But at least it isn't raining, and it's a much warmer day than it was yesterday. So the trap's been in here overnight. I'm now going to lift it out and see what's inside. What a difference putting some bait in has made. I'll speed this next bit up because it's going to take me a while to untangle this but um you'll be you'll be surprised at this. I'm going to put these in a container to make it easy to video it. It's a range of sizes but most of them are very very big and that's going to provide numerous meals. Look at them fellas, amazing. Well I'd say that was definitely a resounding success and as a reward for their cooperation I'm going to put them all back and I'm going to give them what's left of the squirrel as well. Excellent. Hope you've taken something from this video. I've really, really enjoyed making it and I've been blown away by the success of this trap as well. It's more than I could ever wish for. If you've liked this video and you want to see more about catching crayfish, then please check out the channel in the video description. It is Mike's channel. He's another guy in the UK and his channel name is MCQ Bushcraft. He has... quite easily the best bushcraft channel in the UK that I've seen anyway. I haven't seen a better one and he's a very likeable chap, does excellent videos please check him out. If you've enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up, share it wherever you want. I'm not on Facebook or Twitter or forums or any of that sort of stuff so just if you want to share it, share it. Thanks very much for watching I shall catch you in the next video.