Angling is the act of fishing with a hook, or angle(hence, the name), which is typically attached to a fishing line and a rod or pole. This is the most known and widely used technique to fishing. For the most part, angling is used for sport or recreational fishing. The act of catch and release have become evergrowing part of everyday recreational fishing. Also, some areas have certain laws allowing fishermen to only keep fish that are of certain sizes, to help reduce the risk of extinction.

To be more successful in making your catch, you typically need to attach a type of bait, whether it be live or man-made. Otherwise, equipment, such as a reel, a tool used to wind the line back in, or a sinker, which is a weight put on the line to allow the bait to sink down into the water if it is too light on it's own, can be optional. One way that commercial fisherman may use angling, instead of netting, would be through using mutiple hooks on one long line, known as longlining or by trolling, which is the use of one or multiple lines that are drawn through the water.

Other versions of angling are known as handlining, slabbing, jigging or droplining. Handlining is pretty simple and straight forward. This form of fishing is done by holding the line, with an attached bait, with your hands, instead of using a pole. Slabbing involves lifting and dropping a baited line repeatedly into a school of feeding fish. Jigging takes place by fishing with a jig, which is a certain type of bait typically used to catch fish closer to the bottom of the water. Finally, droplining is done by using a long line with several baited hooks attached to it and dropped vertically down into the water with a weight at the bottom of the line and a float at the top of it. Droplining is slightly different from longlining in the sense that the lines are typically shorter than those of longlining.

Angling can be a very successful and quite easy way to fish if you take the time to learn the basic information needed to execute this skill. With angling, just like any other sport, practice makes perfect.