Fishing & Recovery Rentals

Rental tools for fishing and recovery

Fishing is the operation of recovering something left in the wellbore — a stuck drill string, a parted section of pipe, a dropped tool, or milled debris (“junk”). It is unplanned by nature and every hour of non-productive time is costly, so the priority is getting the right recovery tools to location fast and running them in the correct sequence. Drillstrings rents the complete fishing toolkit, inspected and serialized, and can provide fishing supervision to run the job, so an operator facing a downhole problem has both the hardware and the expertise in one call.

The fishing toolkit

• Fishing tools are the core of the job: overshots and spears to engage the fish externally or internally, fishing jars and bumper subs to deliver upward and downward impact, mills to dress off or cut, taps, magnets to lift ferrous debris, and junk baskets to catch small pieces.
• Downhole tools and BHA components provide the crossovers, subs and stabilization the fishing string is built from.
• Drill pipe and drill collars make up the running string and provide the weight to work the jars.
• Handling tools let the crew make up and run the fishing string safely on the rig floor.

Diagnosing the fish and choosing the tools

Successful fishing starts with understanding the fish: its top geometry, whether it is free or stuck, and why it stuck. That diagnosis drives whether you catch externally with an overshot or internally with a spear, how much jarring impact to apply, and when to switch to milling. Our guides to fishing operations 101 and stuck-pipe prevention and recovery walk through this decision-making, and the rig-floor handling tools guide covers running the fishing string safely.

Sizing the catch tool to the fish

Every fishing string is built around the fish’s dimensions. An external-catch overshot must have the correct bowl and grapple sized to the fish OD; a spear or tap must match the fish ID. Get the catch size wrong and the tool either will not engage or will not release, turning one fishing job into two. That is why the fishing plan starts with the last good tally: the OD, ID, weight and connection of whatever is in the hole, plus the top geometry the catch tool has to engage. We stock overshots and spears across the common size ranges so the catch tool matches the fish.

Working the jars

Recovery usually depends on impact. Fishing jars deliver an up (or down) blow, and their effect depends on the weight run above them — typically drill collars and heavy-weight drill pipe — to store and release energy. Too little weight above the jar and the blow is weak; too much stretch in the string and the timing is off. Sizing the jar and the mass above it to the fish and hole is what makes jarring effective, and it is a core topic in stuck-pipe prevention and recovery.

Common pitfalls

• Wrong catch size — an overshot or spear that does not match the fish wastes a trip.
• Insufficient weight above the jar — the blow lacks the energy to free the fish.
• Jarring past the string’s limit — over-aggressive impact can part the running string and add a second fish.
• No junk-clearing plan — small debris left after milling can jam the next catch tool; run magnets and junk baskets.

Fast, inspected, and supported on location

Fishing tools we rent are inspected to DS-1 / API RP 7G-2 categories, serialized for traceability and available in NACE MR0175 sour-service material for H2S wells. Because fishing is urgent, we stage tools from across our network to reach location quickly, and fishing supervision can mobilize with the equipment. Fishing tools are almost always rented rather than bought given how intermittently they run — see rent vs buy. If you have a fish in the hole, contact us for tools and a supervisor.