In English it doesn't sound natural to say "I fished a fish." You would say "I caught a fish." However, in the instances where I can think of using fish as a verb, it must take a preposition (around, for, in, about).
I went fishing in the lake
good
I went fishing the lake
not good
Does "fish" act as a transitive verb? In English, is there a grammatical term for verbs that require a preposition? Can these verbs still be transitive?
I found this entry in an online dictionary, but honestly I have never heard of the verb fish taking what appears be an object. Let's fish the creek just sounds wrong to my ears.
Best Answer
In some of its senses, fish is a transitive verb, as your dictionary entry attests:
To count as transitive, a verb must take an object. In your example sentence
.. the bracketed constituents are called not objects but "prepositional phrases". "Around" is a complement, or part of the phrasal verb "fished around", according to different grammarians.
"In my pocket" is an adjunct of place, "for my keys" is an adjunct of purpose.
Verbs that do not take direct objects are called "intransitive".
Many verbs are intransitive in one sense but transitive in another sense, like to fish. So say "I fished a fish" would be ungrammatical because in this particular sense the verb is intransitive.