In the poem the narrator—the poet himself—describes his journey across Adriatic islands and recounts events that he and his co-travellers experienced along the path.

The descriptive accounts of Ribanje combine the narrative parts in which events of the journey are detailed, along with the fishermens' complaints, dialogues and conversations.

Hektorović meticulously recorded the songs sung by the fishermen along the way, making this one of the earliest examples in Croatian literature to include transcribed folk music within the text.

The work has been translated from Croatian to English as Fishing and fishermen's conversation by Edward Dennis Goy in 1979.

In 1999 Matica hrvatska published a facsimile reprint of the edition princeps of Ribanje i ribarsko prigovaranje, with parallel translation to modern standard Croatian, conducted by Marko Grčić.