Fishing Terms: 265 Words, Slang and Acronyms Anglers Use

Fishing terms fall into a handful of groups: the tackle, the lures and rigs, the ways they are fished, the fish, the water, and the rules, with a layer of slang and acronyms on top. All 265 are defined below, one line each, alphabetical within each group, with a link to the page that goes deeper wherever one exists. Read a group before a first trip, or jump to the word you just heard at the ramp.

An angler is, word for word, a hook man. “Angle” comes from the Old English angel, a fishhook, from a root that means “to bend.” Tackle came later: a word for gear, above all a ship’s rigging, first used for fishing gear in the late 1300s.

Rods, reels and line

• Action: Where a rod bends under load: fast bends near the tip, moderate into the middle, slow through the whole rod
• Arbor: The center of a reel spool; line is tied to it with an arbor knot
• Backing: Thin line wound under a fly line or braid, to fill the spool and give a running fish more line
• Backlash: A tangle on a baitcaster when the spool spins faster than line leaves it; also called a bird’s nest
• Bail: The wire arm on a spinning reel that closes to pick up the line
• Baitcaster: A reel with a revolving spool that sits on top of the rod; accurate, and the standard for bass
• Blank: The rod itself, before the guides, handle and reel seat are added
• Braid: Line braided from synthetic fibers: thin for its strength, almost no stretch, visible in clear water
• Drag: The adjustable brake in a reel that lets a fish take line before the line breaks
• Ferrule: The joint between the sections of a multi-piece rod
• Fluorocarbon: Line that sinks, stretches little and is less visible under water than mono; the usual leader material
• Gear ratio: Spool turns per turn of the handle, e.g. 7.1:1; higher picks up line faster
• Guides: The rings along a rod that the line runs through
• Leader: A length of line between the main line and the lure, for stealth, abrasion or teeth
• Monofilament: Single-strand nylon line: stretchy, cheap, easy to knot; “mono” for short
• Power: How much force it takes to bend a rod, from ultralight to extra heavy
• Reel seat: The fitting on the handle that clamps the reel to the rod
• Rod and reel combo: A rod sold with a matched reel, often spooled with line
• Spincast reel: A closed-face reel with a push button; the classic first reel for kids
• Spinning reel: A fixed-spool reel that hangs under the rod; the easiest reel to cast light lures with
• Spool: The part of the reel that holds the line
• Test: The rated breaking strength of a line, in pounds: 10 lb test
• Tip-up: An ice-fishing rig that holds a baited line under the ice and raises a flag at a bite
• Ultralight: Very light tackle, usually 2–6 lb line, for small fish and small lures

Hooks and terminal tackle

Terminal tackle is everything tied to the end of the line: hooks, sinkers, floats, snaps and swivels.

• Aught: Hook sizes above size 1, written 1/0, 2/0 and so on; these get bigger as the number rises (hook size chart)
• Bank sinker: A teardrop-shaped weight with an eye, for fishing on the bottom
• Barb: The small reverse point behind the hook point that stops it backing out; see barbless hooks
• Bend: The curved part of a hook between shank and point
• Bobber: A float that holds bait at a set depth and dips when a fish bites
• Bobber stop: A small knot or bead on the line that sets the depth of a slip bobber
• Bullet weight: A cone-shaped sliding sinker, the weight of a Texas rig
• Circle hook: A hook whose point turns back toward the shank, so it catches in the corner of the mouth
• Dropper: A short line off the main line carrying a second hook or fly
• Egg sinker: An egg-shaped weight with a hole through it that slides on the line
• Eye: The loop at the top of a hook that the line is tied to
• Gap: The distance between the hook point and the shank; also “gape”
• J-hook: The traditional J-shaped hook, set with a hard sweep of the rod
• Pyramid sinker: A three-sided weight that digs into sand, for surf and current
• Shank: The straight part of a hook from the eye to the bend
• Slip bobber: A float that slides on the line, stopped by a bobber stop, so you can fish deep and still cast
• Snap: A small wire clip for changing lures without retying
• Snell: A knot that binds the line along the hook shank
• Split shot: A small round weight pinched onto the line
• Stinger hook: An extra hook behind the main one, for fish that strike short; also “trailer hook”
• Swivel: A small two-eyed fitting that spins, to stop line twist
• Three-way swivel: A swivel with three eyes: main line, a weight line and a hook line
• Treble hook: A hook with three points on one shank, standard on crankbaits

Lures, baits and rigs

• Alabama rig: A wire frame that swims several swimbaits at once, like a small school of baitfish
• Artificial: Any lure that is not a natural bait
• Blade bait: A thin, weighted metal lure that vibrates hard on the lift
• Bucktail: Deer tail hair tied on a jig or treble hook; also the name of a bucktail jig
• Buzzbait: A wire topwater lure with a propeller blade that churns the surface
• Carolina rig: A sliding weight ahead of a swivel, then a long leader to the bait; drags the bottom
• Chatterbait: A jig with a hexagonal blade on its nose that makes it vibrate; a bladed jig
• Crankbait: A hard-bodied lure with a lip that makes it dive and wobble on the retrieve
• Cut bait: Pieces of fish used as bait, the standard for catfish
• Dough bait: Scented paste molded on a hook, for stocked trout and catfish; PowerBait is the best known
• Drop shot: A hook tied above a weight at the end of the line, so the bait hangs off the bottom
• Florida rig: A Texas rig with a sinker that screws into the nose of the soft plastic
• Fluke: A soft-plastic jerkbait shaped like a baitfish
• Frog: A hollow, weedless topwater lure for fishing over matted vegetation
• Glide bait: A big jointed swimbait that slides side to side on each turn of the reel
• Grub: A soft-plastic body with a curly tail, usually on a jighead
• Inline spinner: A blade that spins around a straight wire shaft; the Rooster Tail is one
• Jerkbait: A slim hard lure worked with jerks of the rod, darting and pausing
• Jig: A hook with a weighted head molded on, usually with a skirt or soft-plastic trailer
• Jighead: The bare weighted hook of a jig, for rigging soft plastics
• Jointed lure: A hard lure built in two or more hinged sections for a looser swimming action
• Lipless crankbait: A sinking, rattling crankbait with no lip, fished fast or yo-yoed
• Live bait: Any living bait: worms, minnows, crickets, crayfish, shiners
• Ned rig: A small floating soft plastic on a light mushroom jighead
• Popper: A topwater plug with a cupped face that spits water when twitched
• Prop bait: A topwater plug with propellers at one or both ends
• Senko: A soft-plastic stick bait that sinks with a slow shimmy
• Shaky head: A jighead with a screw-lock, rigged with a straight worm standing tail-up
• Soft plastic: Any lure molded from soft plastic: worms, craws, grubs, swimbaits
• Spinnerbait: A safety-pin wire lure with blades on the upper arm and a skirted hook below
• Spoon: A curved piece of metal that wobbles and flashes
• Squarebill: A shallow crankbait with a square lip that bounces off wood and rock
• Stickbait: A topwater plug with no lip or props, walked side to side
• Suspending: A lure that neither sinks nor rises when you stop reeling
• Swimbait: A lure shaped and swimming like a baitfish, soft or hard
• Teardrop: A small teardrop-shaped jig, mostly for panfish through the ice
• Texas rig: A soft plastic on a hook with the point buried in the body and a bullet weight ahead: weedless
• Topwater: Any lure fished on the surface
• Trailer: A soft plastic added to a jig, spinnerbait or chatterbait for bulk and action
• Wacky rig: A stick bait hooked through the middle, so both ends flutter

Techniques

• Bottom fishing: Fishing bait on or just off the bottom with a weight
• Burning: Reeling a lure as fast as you can
• Catch and release: Putting fish back alive; “C&R”
• Chumming: Throwing bait or scent into the water to draw fish in
• Culling: Swapping a smaller fish out of the livewell for a bigger one, in a tournament limit
• Dead-sticking: Leaving a lure motionless on the bottom or in the water column
• Drifting: Letting the wind or current move the boat or the bait
• Fan casting: Casting in a fan pattern to cover all the water around you
• Finesse fishing: Small, light lures on light line, fished slowly
• Flipping: Short, quiet presentations to close cover, the line pulled out by hand
• Hookset: Driving the hook into the fish’s mouth with the rod when it bites
• Jigging: Lifting and dropping a lure, often straight under the boat or through the ice
• Live-lining: Fishing a live bait with no float and little or no weight, letting it swim
• Noodling: Catching catfish by hand from their holes; legal only in some states
• Pitching: An underhand cast that swings the lure low to cover, a little farther than flipping
• Power fishing: Covering water fast with moving lures such as crankbaits and spinnerbaits
• Ripping: A sharp pull of the rod that tears a lure free of grass
• Sight fishing: Casting to a fish you can see, such as a bass on its bed
• Sink and draw: Letting a lure sink, then lifting it with the rod, and repeating
• Skipping: Side-arm casting so a lure skips across the surface under docks and branches
• Slow rolling: Reeling a spinnerbait slowly along the bottom
• Snagging: Hooking a fish anywhere but in the mouth; illegal for most game fish in many states
• Still fishing: Waiting with bait under a float or on the bottom
• Trolling: Pulling lures or baits behind a moving boat
• Walk the dog: A rhythmic twitch that swings a topwater stickbait side to side

Fly fishing

• Dead drift: A fly moving at exactly the speed of the current, like a free-drifting insect
• Double taper (DT): A fly line tapered the same at both ends, so it can be reversed
• Drag: Unnatural movement of a fly caused by the line pulling it
• Dry fly: A fly that floats, imitating an adult insect on the surface
• Dry-dropper: A floating fly with a nymph hung below it
• Dun: A mayfly freshly hatched into a winged adult
• Emerger: A fly imitating an insect caught in the surface film while it hatches
• Euro nymphing: Tight-line nymphing with heavy flies, a long rod and no indicator
• False cast: A cast kept in the air to measure distance or dry a fly
• Hatch: Insects of one species leaving the water as adults, often all at once
• Indicator: A small float on the leader that shows a take when nymphing
• Line weight: The rating that matches a fly line to a rod: a 5-weight line on a 5-weight rod
• Match the hatch: Choosing a fly by the size, shape and color of what the fish are eating
• Mend: Flipping the line upstream or downstream on the water to remove drag
• Midge: A tiny two-winged insect that hatches year-round; a key trout food in winter
• Nymph: The underwater stage of an insect, and the fly that imitates it
• Rise: A fish taking something at the surface, leaving a ring
• Roll cast: A cast that rolls the line forward without a back cast, for tight spots
• Spinner: A mature mayfly that mates and falls spent on the water; also the “spinner fall”
• Streamer: A larger fly imitating a baitfish, leech or crayfish, stripped back
• Strip: Pulling line in by hand to retrieve a fly
• Strip set: Setting the hook by pulling the line with the line hand instead of lifting the rod
• Tippet: The finest section at the end of a fly leader, where the fly is tied
• Weight forward (WF): A fly line with its weight concentrated at the front, the easiest to cast
• Wet fly: A fly fished below the surface, swung across the current
• Wind knot: An overhand knot formed in the leader by a casting fault, not by wind
• X: Tippet size by diameter: subtract the X from 11 for the diameter in thousandths of an inch (5X is 0.006 in)

The whole outfit, from rod to tippet chart, is in how to fly fish for trout.

The fish

• Adipose fin: The small fleshy fin without rays between the dorsal fin and tail, on trout, salmon and catfish
• Anadromous: Born in fresh water, grows at sea, returns to spawn, like salmon and steelhead
• Anal fin: The single fin on the underside near the tail
• Baitfish: Small fish that bigger fish eat: shad, shiners, alewives, minnows
• Barbels: The whiskers of a catfish: feelers for taste and touch, harmless to hold near
• Bedding: Bass or sunfish guarding a nest they have fanned on the bottom
• Buck: A male fish, used for bass, trout and salmon
• Catadromous: The reverse of anadromous: lives in fresh water, spawns at sea, like the American eel
• Caudal fin: The tail fin
• Dorsal fin: The fin on the back
• Fingerling: A young fish about the length of a finger, the size many hatcheries stock
• Forage: What a fish eats
• Fry: Newly hatched fish
• Gamefish: A fish sought for sport and managed with seasons and limits
• Gill rakers: Bony comb-like projections on the gill arches that strain food
• Hen: A female trout or salmon
• Holdover: A stocked trout that survived from an earlier season
• Hybrid: A cross of two species, often sterile, such as the tiger trout, splake or wiper
• Jack: A young male salmon that returns to spawn a year or more early
• Kelt: A steelhead or Atlantic salmon that has spawned and survived
• Kype: The hooked lower jaw of a male trout or salmon in spawning season
• Lateral line: The row of sensory pores along each side that feels vibration and pressure
• Native: A fish in the water where its species evolved, as opposed to stocked or introduced
• Operculum: The bony gill cover
• Panfish: Small fish that fit a frying pan: bluegill, crappie, perch
• Parr marks: Oval marks along the sides of young trout and salmon
• Pectoral fins: The paired fins just behind the gills
• Pelvic fins: The paired fins on the belly
• Post-spawn: The weeks after spawning, when fish recover and feed
• Pre-spawn: The weeks before spawning, when fish move shallow and feed heavily
• Redd: A trout or salmon nest: a patch of gravel the female has dug and cleaned
• Rough fish: An old label for fish not managed as game fish, such as carp, suckers and gar
• Slime coat: The mucus layer on a fish’s skin that protects it from infection; wet hands keep it on
• Smolt: A young salmon or steelhead turning silver before it goes to sea
• Sow: A big female bass
• Spawn: Reproduction, and the season it happens in; see the bass spawn
• Stocker: A hatchery fish, usually a trout, released for anglers
• Swim bladder: The gas-filled organ a fish uses to hold its depth
• Wild: Born in the river, even if the species was introduced there once

Water and structure

• Bait ball: A tight school of baitfish pushed together by predators
• Blitz: Predators tearing into baitfish at the surface, often with birds diving
• Breakline: The edge where depth changes quickly
• Channel: The old riverbed through a reservoir, deeper than the water around it
• Cover: Things fish hide in or under: weeds, wood, docks, rocks
• Drop-off: A fast change from shallow to deep water
• Eddy: A pocket of slower, circling current behind an obstruction
• Fish crib: An artificial reef of brush or wood sunk to hold fish
• Flat: A large area of fairly even depth
• Freestone: A river fed by rain and snowmelt rather than springs; it swings in flow and temperature
• Hump: An underwater hill surrounded by deeper water
• Laydown: A fallen tree lying in the water
• Ledge: A sharp step in the bottom, often the edge of a river channel
• Mat: A floating layer of dense vegetation
• Point: Land that runs out into the water, and continues under it
• Pool: A deep, slow section of a stream
• Riffle: Shallow, fast, broken water over gravel
• Riprap: Rock placed along a bank or dam to stop erosion
• Run: Deeper, steady current between a riffle and a pool
• Seam: The line where fast and slow current meet
• Slack tide: The pause between an incoming and outgoing tide
• Spring creek: A stream fed by groundwater, steady in flow and temperature
• Structure: Changes in the bottom itself: points, humps, ledges, drop-offs
• Tailout: The shallowing, speeding end of a pool
• Tailwater: The river below a dam, often cold year-round
• Thermocline: The layer in a summer lake where the temperature drops fast with depth
• Turnover: The fall mixing of a lake when the surface cools to the temperature of the deep water
• Undercut bank: A bank the current has hollowed underneath; prime trout cover
• Walleye chop: A light wind chop on the surface; walleye anglers welcome it because it dims the light in shallow water
• Weed line: The edge of a weed bed, where it meets open water

How much the water’s temperature decides is in water temperature; how pressure and the moon figure in, in barometric pressure and moon phase.

Rules and records

Slang

Acronyms

Where to go from the words

Every term above is in use at the ramp, the tackle shop or on a regulation page. The fishing basics hub is the next step for a new angler, with fishing for beginners as the first day in practice, and the knots section the first skill to learn.