Choosing a knife for fishing: what you need to know

Often our passion for fishing is closely linked to our camping life. Perhaps fishermen’s trips are not as active and long-distance as hunters’, but good equipment in any trip into the wilderness will not hurt, especially if the trip involves an overnight stay in the forest or on the shore of a body of water. Modern well-designed shoes, clothing, backpack and tent – these are all very important types of equipment that make it possible to bear all the hardships of camping life with the greatest possible comfort. In this article I want to tell you about the items of camping equipment, which can be rightfully considered the most ancient and without which any, even the most prepared modern man in the wilderness turns into his ancient forefather, using his teeth and nails or trying to use rocks and sticks, and all because he forgot to take any knife.

A knife is one of the most important elements of equipment

First and foremost, a knife is a tool

The choice of different kinds of knives today is extremely diverse. Manufacturers, overtaking competitors in pursuit of the contents of the purse of potential buyers, sometimes already forget about common sense, creating for the sake of attracting attention to themselves different useless and bizarre hybrids of a knife, axe and shovel with a flashlight. We, fishermen, all the same people are adequate and such oddities will not consider. It is better to talk about really useful and serious tools. It is worth immediately discarding all sorts of phobias of some strange individuals who are inclined to assume that the possession of a man knife is necessarily associated with something unkind in his intentions. This is all, as they say, to the doctor, such people with paranoid thoughts better go to a psychiatrist. For the rest, normal and adequate people, everything is simple and clear – a knife is a useful and necessary tool. We all use these simple tools in our daily lives, including their use in the conditions of our favorite hobbies, including fishing. Based on our needs and considerations we purchase different quantities of these sharp tools, here everyone has different needs and views. For some people a small stash in their pocket or in a pouch on their belt is enough for all occasions. And for others it is important for each type of activity to have a knife suitable for their reasoning. And there are still the third, fourth, fifth, but who knows who and how to look at their equipment, everyone has their own views and life experience.

Standard kit

The average ordinary fisherman-traveler that occasionally goes on small trips to forest rivers and lakes, it will be enough to have one or two single-blade knives. They will be enough to cook dinner, cut something, cut down a few branches, clean fish or cut mushrooms. Usually it is one rather massive tool, with a fixed blade of 120-160mm, it is good to chop something like branches on an overgrown path or spruce lapnik for bedding for the night, to clean fish and cut mushrooms, as well as to carve different rudimentary devices for camping and resting on the shore. The second knife or already a knife is a pocket folding knife with a short blade 75-100mm, it will help to cope with food, opening of some packages and with small repairs of equipment at the camping site.

When choosing such tools it should be understood that in hiking conditions, and even associated with fishing, and therefore with water, knives should be chosen with blades made of corrosion-resistant steels. Handle made of rubber plastic will also be preferable to beautiful wooden ones because of its unpretentiousness to the environment, moisture and fish slime. And even being wet and dirty, such a handle will not slip out of the hand, to get hurt is less likely. In addition, such knives are sometimes equipped with utilitarian scabbards made of plastic, which do not swell from water, as it can happen with scabbards made of leather. Given the not-so-high prices of such tools, they are not so bad to scratch or even lose. In fishing stores, such knives are offered by many domestic and imported manufacturers – NOKS, Kizlyar and Kizlyar Supreme, Morakniv, Ganzo and many others.

Rubber or plastic handle is more practical than a wooden one

Single-link folding knives are mostly very practical and are often equipped with handle covers made of various plastics and blades made of corrosion-resistant steels. Although some knives with wooden handles are still popular with fishermen, such as inexpensive French Opinel knives.

Opinel models are popular among knives with wooden handles

People with higher demands can always find knives made of more expensive steels, with handles made of precious wood, stabilized and not afraid of moisture. All over the world a great number of craftsmen work in different artels and large factories, creating for you and me a wide range of sharp tools of all systems and sizes.

There are also models with handles made of precious wood with moisture protection

Selection mistakes

I will not tell about the differences in the systems of various knife locks, all this is on the pages of any store selling folding knives. I will only say that the presence in a folding knife (faulder) such a function as locking the blade in the open position is a very useful necessity. Of course, a folding knife without a blade lock is not bad either, but you should use it with much more caution, because you can easily get hurt if the blade of such a folding knife suddenly slams shut while doing any work. Therefore, when choosing a folding knife should prefer knives with a lock that fixes the open blade, especially if you are a novice user.

When choosing a folding knife, you should opt for knives with a lock that locks the blade open

As for choosing belt knives with a fixed blade, you should start by coming to an understanding of what tasks and environment you will need this tool for in the first place, discarding secondary requests.

Here it is worth mentioning the presence in the sale of quite a large number of so-called “survival knives”, which, apparently, are designed to deter different bears, wolves, tigers, zombies and other evil that is waiting in the depths of the forests of careless travelers. So, the counters with such remboid cleavers or Crocodile Dundee knives should be avoided, because the tools from them are practically no tools at all, at most you can successfully cut down a couple of branches with them, and then you will break your hand with their metal handle.

The tools from them are practically nothing

The right choice

If on the way to your favorite hunting, mushroom grounds and forest water bodies you have to chop branches from time to time on the forest path overgrown since the last season, and in general use the chopping properties of the knife periodically, then it is worth paying attention to the knives of “fulltang” type. These are those knives, where the blade and the handle are made of a single steel plate, with side plates on the handle or a fully molded handle made of rubber plastic. Such knives are heavier than others, but they are the strongest and most reliable. Knives with adhesive bonding of the blade in a wooden handle can get cracks and break the handle when chopping branches.

Pay attention to knives of the “fulltang” type

When choosing, you should carefully examine the shape of the blade on the blade of the knife. Often you can see in the sale of knives with blades whose blade has the shape of a concave lens. Such blades, as a rule, are distinguished by excellent cutting edge, but you should refrain from chopping with such a blade, especially from chopping dry spruce and juniper branches. The point is that a dry spruce twig can be as hard as a stone, and the thin cutting edge of the blade may well crumble from a blow. Therefore, when choosing a knife, which you are going to chop branches and cut dried wood for the fire, look for blades with straight bevels of the blade.

When choosing, pay attention to the shape of the blade

By the way, whatever knife you choose, a very useful addition to its design will be a hole on the shank of the handle. Through it it will be useful to drag and tie a small temlak of rope or leather. Such a simple tuning is not just a decoration, it will help you in holding the knife, especially with wet and slippery hands, will avoid unnecessary injury, because a weighty knife slipping out of your hand can go into your leg.

A small rope or leather handle will help to keep the knife in place.

Multi-purpose knives

Choosing a pocket knife, many of us buy not a single-blade knife, but prefer more multifunctional tools. One of the ancestors of such knives is considered to be Swiss army knives, which have long been the subject of imitation for many manufacturers. Swiss knives themselves are very widely represented in our market and most of them are quite logically preferred when choosing such multi-purpose folding knives. You just need to think and imagine what kind of work you most often have to perform in your travels and find among the many Swiss knives the most optimal option in terms of equipment. I can show here as a reference point a few of my Swiss knives, which I use in fishing conditions, perhaps it will help someone to make their first choice in this area faster.

My oldest and most honored Swiss is the Victorinox Forester. It is a knife from the so-called soldier’s series, they are more massive than the officer’s, the Forester has a 90mm blade, it locks in the open position, besides the knife has a screwdriver with a lock, and its kit also includes a saw, awl, bottle opener and corkscrew. I have practically never parted with the Forester for over 20 years. Its blade helps me with groceries in the camp, saw – with spruce lapniks and cutting dried wood for the fire, openers and corkscrew also sometimes do their job.

Victorinox knives have several useful functions

Victorinox Huntsman from the officer’s series has been helping me for a long time. It is more compact, so it accompanies me more often in streetfishing and traveling. It has no blade lock, but it has two blades. I use the larger one to cut food, and the shorter one to cut fishing lines and cords or to open packages. Saw, screwdrivers, can opener and corkscrew are the same as in Forrester, but scissors are useful when nails start to tear gloves during long trips with living far from home.

The features of these knives come in handy during long fishing trips

SWIZA has recently made a name for itself in the knife market. This Swiss manufacturer offers its original multi-purpose knives, which are noticeably different from others, among their range I found for myself a very interesting model SWIZA TT03. In the set of this knife except 75mm fixed blade, saw, screwdriver and corkscrew, there is a very convenient end awl, which can be easily and quickly drilled in wood, the diameter of the resulting holes up to 8mm, so that in spring you can easily extract birch sap with its help. And also this knife has a built-in retractable tool for removing ticks with a magnifying glass for the ability to examine the tick and the degree of its immersion in the skin. I haven’t used it yet, but I’ve already pulled out one tick from a friend with this tool. In general, this is my spring version of a hiking multi-tool.

Spring version of a camping tool

And the most compact is my Victorinox Classic, it’s only 58mm long. I usually have this miniature knife attached to the pendant of my fishing vest. With its sharp little blade I cut lines and cords, and with its tiny diamond file I sometimes straighten dulled hooks after hooks. The scissors sometimes cut braid, and sometimes cut my fingernails.

Compact model with a sharp blade

Tweezers and toothpicks, which are completed with Swiss knives, are also useful, occasionally had to pull out splinters with tweezers, and toothpicks to use after a meal in nature.

For experienced knife-men I have not opened any America here, but, perhaps, was useful to those who are not yet dense in this topic and choose their first knives for fishing trips.

Author: Bob Nudd is an expert fisherman with over 20 years experience and winner of many competitions.