fish out
verb1
To catch all or nearly all the fish in (a given body of water), so that few or none remain.
- Settlers came and soon fished out the lake.
2
To pick up or pull something or someone from (a body of water).
- Losing nearly a third of the heavy cruisers, including Admiral Kurita's flagship, the Atago, was not an especially-auspicious start to the operation, especially with the admiral himself having to be fished out of the water by a destroyer.2019 February 27, Drachinifel, 5:34 from the start, in The Battle of Samar - Odds? What are those?, archived from the original on 03 Nov 2022:
3
Idiomatic To search for by rummaging, and then extract (an item from e.g. a container); to obtain.
- I fished out my keys from the bottom of my bag.
- I fished out some information from some old copies of the local gazette.