Fishing Spiders 101
"Eek...They're Big Enough to Saddle Up and Ride!"
Have you ever been near the water's edge and seen very large spiders that are hanging out in or on the water? If you're in the Eastern United States near fresh water or brackish water, then you've most likely met the common fishing spider also called dock spiders or wharf spiders. At our rowing boat house we call them launch spiders too. In part this is because they like to ride in our launch boat and if you hit high speeds in that launch boat they tend to "launch" themselves at you when they lose their footing (which our fearless coaches can attest to!). Fortunately, fishing spiders are very harmless and quite skittish despite their size (ranging from 1-3").
Fishing spiders belong to the genus Dolomedes (dole-o-me-dees) in the family Pisauridae (fizz-our-i-day), and compared to other tiny spiders they look big enough to carry off small children (when actually they eat small bugs, tadpoles, and other invertebrates). There are 100+ species of Dolomedes world wide but 8 that are common in the US. These include (using my common names and Latin names):