The natives used hooks and nets as well as the spear in catching fish. William Buckley makes the following statement in his Life and Adventures:–“They used to take me out on calm evenings to teach me how to spear salmon, bream, &c. Their manner is to get some very dry sticks, cut them into lengths of ten or twelve feet, tie several of them together into a kind of faggot, and then light the thickest end; with this torch blazing in one hand and a spear in the other they go into the water, and the fish, seeing the flame, crowd round and are easily taken.”

The Jardines saw, at Maramie Creek, “two parties of blacks fishing on the river. . … They used reed-spears, pointed with four jagged prongs, and also hooks and lines. Their hooks are made of wood, barbed with bone, and the lines of twisted Currejong bark.” The same writers say that “considerable nicety is shown in the making of fishing lines and hooks. The former are made from the fibres of a species of climber, very neatly twisted. The fishhooks are made of tortoise-shell, or nails procured from wreck-timber. They are without barbs, and our fish-hooks are eagerly sought for in place of them.”

In catching eels, Buckley observed that though they spear them frequently, “they generally use lines–the bait being a large earth-worm.