How to catch a 'Big Fish'

Growing up in a time when ponds, creeks and canals were still clean, natural and somehow connected, one thing I learned was how to catch fish.

- CITO BELTRAN

As I think about it, the same can be done to catch a "Big Fish" involved in crime.

For instance, knowing the kind of fish there is in a body of water usually dictates the technique or technology to use. My father often talked about how difficult it was to catch catfish because they stir up the mud to evade detection and capture.

I remember farmers using a bamboo "saklob" or trap, drive it down into the muddy water and then check if they caught the catfish. Sometimes you get hito or dalag, but often you get zip.

If you were gunning for mudfish or dalag, you know that they regularly come up to breathe air and disappear in the blink of an eye. So, the time-tested method is to use a sling shot, which was eventually replaced by an air gun or "di bomba."

As kids in gartered short pants, what we often did was to dam up portions of canals and use buckets to drain out the water and after an hour or so, we simply pick up all the fish we could find. We literally left them no place to hide.

As time passed, some people applied technology in the form of a 12-volt car battery, two wire probes with switches and would electroshock portions of ponds and canals. The fish were electrocuted and caught but this damaged the reproductive capability of the fish that got away.

In a manner of speaking, crooks and criminals of the bigger kind are similar to wild fish. They stay under cover, watch the smaller fish fall for the bait. If you use the traditional means of hook, line and sinker, you will be waiting a very long, long time.