Fish are not the only bottom-dwellers in the Detroit River.

Instead of hooking bass or crappie, a father and son duo are netting a different kind of catch: trash.

Tom Nardone about a year ago founded Trash Fishing, a group that scours the shorelines and depths of the Detroit River for garbage in an effort to combine volunteering and fun.

“It’s kind of like regular fishing, except you’d catch three things in an hour,” Nardone said. “If you go trash fishing, you catch 300 things in an hour.”

Everything from the mundane to the extravagant lurks beneath the surface, one swipe of a grabber tool away. One of the Nardones first finds was a stray water ski. A magnetic search device led to the discovery of a Lime electric scooter. They’ve pulled up hundreds of pounds of stray water bottles, soda bottles and Styrofoam containers.

“Most of the stuff we see is not really malicious," Nardone said. "It's just accidental trash — there’s tons of it.”

Most of the haul goes to the landfill or recycling plant, but some of it’s worth keeping. The trash fisherman’s most-prized possession is an old buoy the Coast Guard used to deploy in the water to find bodies.

“It must’ve been in the weeds for a long time,” Nardone said. “No body, thank goodness.”

The group meets Saturday mornings for informal competitions modeled off bass-fishing tournaments. There are six scheduled through September, according to the group's Facebook page.

“We eat donuts, we’re good at that,” Nardone said. “Then we launch our boats — we’re getting better at that.”

The goal is to pick up as much trash as possible in two hours, with awards handed out for most trash, biggest piece of trash and most interesting piece of trash.

Nardone describes it as a low-budget, fast-paced operation. They have clean-up supplies, minus boats, for anyone who shows up.

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“If you were a fisherman, you could just show up and we'll turn you into trash fisherman for free,” Nardone said.

The local do-gooder previously ran a similar group called the Mower Gang that mowed and picked up trash in abandoned lots and parks around the city.

Many of the trash fishermen were also involved in the mowing group. Nardone says his friends might think his projects are strange at first, but they usually end up having fun.

“I think I have a reputation of doing adventurous things, like weird adventures, so some of these folks just stick with me no matter what I suggest," Nardone said.

They took the concept from land to water after Nardone’s son, Mark, now 12, watched a video about turtles choking on straws. Although there’s no ocean nearby, there’s plenty of water in Michigan.

After a quick Craigslist search, the Nardones — $1,200 poorer and one inflatable Zodiac boat richer — were ready to load the back of their van and head to the river.

“We went looking for trash and we found it right away,” Nardone said.

There’s a Huck Finn-like quality to putting around on a small boat exploring reedy regions of river tucked in urban areas, Nardone says.

The group’s growth has been slow but steady. The Facebook page hit 1,000 Facebook likes this week, and Nardone hopes it will continue to grow.

“If we can convince other people that it’s fun to collect trash — and it is, that’s the thing — then we can leverage that,” Nardone said. “We can make this thing work.”