Sorta kinda. In 40d I noticed that it's usually not the carp directly killing the dwarf, it's more a "Water*Dwarf Lungs+carp=dwarf corpse" equation. I would think your fishermen would be more likely to live if you taught them to swim first. Once they don't drown in a half foot deep puddle, then wrestling skill will likely help their survival. A dwarf that can't swim is doomed the moment he ends up in the river, whether he can kill the fish or not.
So far in .31 I have been sealing off the caverns when I encountered them and dug around them. For the first time I am building a stronghold in the caverns. I bypassed them long ago, but with the surface fortifications complete, my masons are all sitting idle. My military is up to snuff, so I break into the caverns one at a time, military leading the way as the masons build fancy fortifications down there as well giving me easy access to silk for the first time in .31. The first cavern critter casualty was a gremlin that decided to uncloak in the middle of my lancer squad.
Here's the first strike.
A gremlin! Drive it away!
The militia captain stabs The Gremlin in the throat with his adamantine lance, tearing it apart!
The adamantine lance has lodged firmly in the wound!
The militia captain twists the embedded adamantine lance around in The Gremlin's throat!
Hopefully the slaughter that followed will scare off of the rest of the pea-brained residents from trying anything equally stupid.
EDIT much later: Oh my god it's pandemonium! I got 2 "A vile force of darkness has arrived"! One from orcs, one from goblins. Since the current cavern hadn't had any action in awhile I send the military to the surface to man the walls. That was a terrible idea. I now have two elk birds and a giant rat rampaging through my fortress while my military is busy fighting two armies of greenskins.
The Fortress guard is trying their best to fight off the underground fauna but are failing miserably. They aren't as trained as the regular army, and they are only using maces. It's like a scene from benny hill as they chase the elk birds around the fortress while a war dog and a giant rat are having a nibble fight. One of the fortress guard actually fell into my sacrifice to Armok pit in his incompetence and broke most of the bones in his body after landing on a menacing spike and passing out.