Inmates use the outdoor recreation areas at the Allegheny County Jail to shoot hoops, play handball or do calisthenics. A few enterprising types at the Downtown riverfront facility have even taken up a new pastime: fishing.

But their version of the sport requires a great deal of preparation work and nets a very different catch.

Several prisoners on the Monongahela River side of the 16-story facility have been spotted casting lines out the recreation room air slats and trolling for contraband outside the jail.

A fishing conspirator arrives at a pre-arranged time and place outside the jail and ties the goods to the line. The successful angler typically reels in a small stash of tobacco or marijuana, jail officials said.

The practice of fashioning a string out of bedsheets or uniforms and weighting it down with a small battery so it can be used in this way is known in jail parlance as fishing. To allow the fishing tackle to sink to the ground from the jail's lower levels, Warden Ramon Rustin estimates, a line would have to be at least 100 feet long.

"The average person would never think of something like that," said Maj. James Donis, a top official at the jail.

Since the jail opened, joggers and others using the Eliza Furnace Trail, commonly known as the "jail trail," have alerted authorities when they noticed people signaling to inmates with flashlights or headlights from across the Mon on the South Side. Jail guards figure this is the sign to throw down a line.

Earlier this year, the jail erected a barbed wire fence along its southern perimeter with the express purpose of preventing further fishing expeditions. The warden put a stop to nighttime recreational hours and said he is budgeting for cameras to be installed in the recreation areas this year.

Inmates and their fishing buddies on the outside face steep penalties for trespassing and introducing contraband, but this hasn't stopped the practice altogether.

Several weeks ago, an inmate was nabbed casting out of a housing pod window on the northwest corner of the jail, near the Municipal Courts building.

"It's one of the drawbacks of having institutions in an urban setting," he said.

Rural jails often have an internal yard that is easier to patrol.

The county's high-rise jail, which opened in 1995 and houses about 2,500 inmates, is the largest correctional facility under one roof east of Mississippi. Instead of a yard, each housing pod -- or cell block -- has a door that leads to a drafty indoor-outdoor recreation room that is enclosed on all sides.

Each room has a few high windows along two adjoining walls. These are covered in cross-hatched metal grating; the fishing holes in the grating are about the size of a playing card. The windows can't be sealed because the law requires that inmates have access to fresh air.

"Rain comes in, snow comes in, cold comes in, heat comes in and birds come in," Maj. Donis said.

He said staff members are trying everything at their disposal to outfox the fishermen and keep them from reeling in contraband through those windows, too.