Trawling

“ They know how laboriously they traverse the shores, just in such places as the fish would choose to deposit their eggs. But it should be remembered that trawling is not a common practice on the herring grounds, nor upon the cod-banks ”

“ We would have a couple of hours trawling for fish in the usual manner, and then if wind and tide were favourable, would run in and land our trawl, and fish at the pier head, and bring out with us another implement, which was a cross between a dredge and a trawl. It had an iron beam about six feet wide, which kept the net on the bottom by reason of its weight; from this rose an iron bow, forming a flattened half circle, and to this was attached a piece of heavy double netting, the bottom of which was protected from the rocks by a piece of old sail cloth a little larger than the plan of the net. ”

“ Of these some forty-four are at present in force, twenty-two applying to all trawling and twenty-two to steam trawling alone, and one or two of them date from the years 1842 and 1851.1306 Under these byelaws trawling in one form or another is prohibited entirely or under certain conditions at most parts of the coast of Ireland; and on certain parts of the coast not inconsiderable stretches of the sea, beyond the three-mile limit and the limit for bays as defined in the fishery conventions, are closed against this method of fishing. ”

“ Trawling is said to have been invented at the end of the seventeenth century by the Brixham fishermen. The first trawlers were quite small vessels, and were followed towards the end of the eighteenth century by the smack. The smack reached its maximum size and efficiency at about the middle of the nineteenth century. Some of the smacks that are still fishing from Brixham—durable, seaworthy, and with beautiful lines—are probably a hundred years old. ”

“ To work a beam trawl successfully, it is necessary to know the character of the sea bottom, whether rough or smooth, and also the time and direction of the tide. The net is trawled with the tide a little faster than it is running, so that sufficient resistance is encountered to keep the net extended. In shooting the trawl, great care must be taken to make it alight on its runners in the correct position for trawling. ”

“ A further improvement was made by attaching a long iron bar to the bottom of the dredge bag, and fastening large bunches of teased-out hemp to the end of this bar. These "tangles" bring up immense quantities of such animals as have long arms, or spines, or prominences which readily become caught in the hemp, but they are very destructive to the fragile organisms which they imprison; and, now that the trawl can be successfully worked at the greatest depths, it may be expected to supersede them; at least, wherever the ground is soft enough to permit of trawling. ”

“ This latter fact discloses the ground of complaint which the fishermen who use the drift-net to take herrings have against the trawlers, who rake the seashores in their endeavours to catch the flat-fish tribe, and indeed whatever comes into their net: for a trawl is an omnium gatherum, and takes everything that is not strong enough to break its meshes. The cod and herring fishers say that these trawl-nets destroy the spawn of the fish by breaking it up, and also by raking the stones and mud over it. ”

“ Fishing begins as soon as the smacks reach the Banks. In other years all cod were caught by means of handlines, and some fish are still taken that way. The most, however, are now taken by trawls, which were introduced about 1860 and were first used by the French. A trawl consists of a line some 3,000 feet in length, to which are attached short ones about a yard long, on each of which is a hook. The short lines are placed about six feet apart, so that each trawl has about 500 hooks. Attached to each end of the line by a rope is a buoy, sometimes only an empty powder keg or a mackerel kit. ”

“ The girls, Elizabeth and Edith Remington were anxious to help also.
On the way from the bungalow after breakfast, Elizabeth explained to the boys. “We can fish all morning and catch enough bait for the lobster-traps and set the herring-net to get the bait for the trawl overnight.”
28 “How many hooks are on that trawl?” asked Paul.
“About five hundred,” replied Fred. “Each one is on a short line called a ‘gangin’ which is about a foot and a half long. These gangins hang down every five or so feet along the whole length of the trawl. They have the hooks at the ends and these we have to bait.” ”

“ Although to the outsider one trawler may look very like another, to us who know them personally they differ in character and have their little idiosyncrasies no less than other people. Some are quite surly and obstinate, others good-humoured and light-hearted; where one exhibits all the stately dignity of a College head-porter another may be as skittish and full of fun as a magistrate on the Bench. There was one trawler at our base so vain that they could never get her to enter the lockpits until her decks had been scrubbed and a string of bunting hoisted at the foremast. ”

“ Soon the gear was down in the twenty-five fathom water, and the trawl-warp became as rigid almost as an iron bar, while the speed of the smack through the water was greatly reduced—perhaps to three miles an hour—by the heavy drag behind her, a drag that ever increased as fish of all sorts and sizes were scraped into the net. Why the fish are such idiots as to remain in the net when they could swim out of it at the rate of thirty miles an hour is best known to themselves. ”

“ Two men now put off in each of these boats and anchor the trawls at convenient distances from each other, in such a way that the trawl-line, with its fringe of hooks, shall be stretched taut and at the proper depth. How long they stay down depends on the weather—five or six hours, or from evening until morning, is the usual period. Then the men go out, and taking up the anchors at one end, haul each trawl into the boat, coiling it in the bottom and taking off the hooks each captive fish as fast as they come to it. ”

“ The under side of the net is made with a curved margin. The outside is guarded from chafing, when the trawl is being worked over the bottom, by pieces of old net. The meshes vary in size according to the part of the trawl. Near the mouth, they are four inches square, and in the cod, an inch and a quarter. The trawl is hauled along by a bridle, that is to say, by two ropes of about fifteen fathoms each, which are fastened to the ends of the trawl heads, and unite at a warp, one hundred and fifty fathoms long, which serves to haul the net along. ”

“ She left Hull, however, with only four men, for the boy did not join her until she had been out cruising a week, when he was sent to her in a steamer.
Life on board a smack is but a dull affair, and such excitements as it has are all against the fisherman. It is tedious work drifting for hours with the trawl overboard; but what is to be made of it when, as sometimes happens, the trawl is got aboard and the net found torn to pieces by a piece of sunken wreck or something of that kind, and all the fish gone? ”

“ A trawl in England is a large purse-net attached to a heavy beam raised upon trawl-heads, or irons at either end, and dragged along the bottom of the sea. In Scotland it is simply a drift or seine-net. ”

“ One man uses from two to six trawls, which are usually visited in a dory very early each morning and once or twice during the day. When one buoy is reached the end of the trawl to which it is attached is drawn up, the hooks examined and the fish taken off. By means of trawls a man may catch more in a single night than by a week's hard work with hand lines. ”

“ Those who advocate the abolition of the trawl-net must be prepared to satisfy all Londoners for their deprivation of the sole, seeing that that fish is rarely, if ever, taken in any other way than by means of the trawl-net. ”

“ We want to begin as quick as we can to round up some of those dollars that are finning and crawling [Pg 54] in to us, so we mustn't waste any time in getting our trawls and traps overboard. First of all, we need bait. We can buy hake heads for our lobster-traps from the fish-wharf at Matinicus, and herring for the trawls from one of the weirs at Vinalhaven. That means traveling over forty miles; but it's fine weather, and we ought to do it easily. Besides, it'll give you fellows a good chance to learn how to handle a power-sloop. ”

“ Three causes make the occupation of those fishermen who go for cod and halibut to the Newfoundland Banks extra hazardous—the almost continual fog, the swift steel Atlantic liners always plowing their way at high speed across the fishing grounds, heedless of fog or darkness, and the custom of fishing with trawls which must be tended from dories. The trawl, which is really only an extension of hand-lines, is a French device adopted by American fishermen early in the last century. ”

“ No longer men with the ready money to purchase a trap bothered with the hook and line or jigger or puttered with the trawl.
With the great seines rich harvests were drawn from the icy deep, and Taylor himself on more than one occasion had gathered an even hundred quintals at one haul. Of the customary two hauls a day, this was the lucky morning haul, and with song and shout the Graywing's crews in the dories raced expectantly for the moorings of their berth. ”

“ Formerly, the fish as soon as they were caught, were sent to market in fast-sailing cutters, but now steamers are generally employed; the fish, as soon as collected, being packed in ice. The trawlers themselves stay out for six weeks at a time, in all seasons of the year. They are remarkably fine vessels, and capable of standing a great deal of rough work; and a hardier set of men than their crews can scarcely anywhere be found. Steam trawlers are gradually coming into use, being independent of wind and weather, and one boat is capable of doing the work of several ordinary vessels. ”

“ Then, as Ellinwood rowed slowly, Code paid the baited trawl-line out of the tubs. As there are hooks every few feet, so are there big wooden buoys, so that the whole length of the line––sometimes twenty-five hundred feet––is floated near the surface.
When the last had been paid out, a second anchor and large buoy was fixed, and their trawl was “set.” Next they turned their attention to picking the trawl already in the water.
As the line came over the starboard gunnel Code picked the fish off the hooks, passing the hooks to Pete, who baited them and threw them over the port 148 gunnel. ”

“ TRAWLS AND WHALES. A trawler, such as the Vixen was, is fitted out very differently from a seiner or a hand-liner, the styles of craft on which Breeze had made his previous fishing trips. Instead of a large seine-boat, she carries from four to eight dories, and a crew sufficiently large to allow two men to each dory, besides the skipper and cook. The trawls are tarred cotton ropes the size of a lead-pencil, that come in lengths of about fifty fathoms, or three hundred feet each. ”

“ C.—Large specimens appear to be decreasing; a great many immature are brought in and sold in the early winter. The trawlers mercilessly pursue the spawning fish. Prior to the advent of "carriers" to the fishing fleets, trawlers anchored in the roads; their fish were "ferried" ashore in huge ferry-boats, run up the beach on "troll-carts," and sent off to London by train. Trolls and ferry-boats are now obsolete. A solitary troll-cart is preserved in Yarmouth Museum. ”

“ It’s a shame, isn’t it, to have to heave the fine fat fish back after you’ve gone to the trouble of baitin’ up four tubs of trawls—to have to haul a mile and a half of trawls and then have to heave them overboard again after they’re coiled nice in the buckets and the fish to your gunnels after them. ”

“ This so tickled Long Jack that he overbore Tom Platt, and the two went out together.
Underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory, picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to the sea again something like pinning and unpinning linen on a wash-line. It is a lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the long, sagging line may twitch a boat under in a flash. ”

“ For there on the rug, as naturally as if asleep, lay the only thing he now loved in the world, the old setter, whose life had passed out in slumber.
All animals have the dying instinct. Man, the highest, has it the clearest. And Travis remembered that the old dog had come to his bed, in the middle of the night, and laid his large beautiful head on his master's breast, and in the dim light of the smouldering fire had said good-bye to Richard Travis as plainly as ever human being said it. ”

“ A fox or beaver would have gnawed the imprisoned limb off. The wolverine picks the trap up in his teeth and hobbles as hard as three legs will carry him to the hiding of a bush, or better still, to the frozen surface of a river, hidden by high banks, with glare ice which will not reveal a trail. But on the river the man finds only a trap wrenched out of all semblance to its proper shape, with the spring opened to release the imprisoned leg. ”

“ Nowadays we generally outgrow this love of trapping, or it remains in the love of sport with gun or rod. But, old Izaak Walton and Frank Forrester to the contrary notwithstanding, I hold that nothing in fishing or shooting has that freshness, that thrilling excitement, that close touch with nature, that clings to our early days, when, in autumn and winter, we went the round of the traps. How through the long night we had visions of the rabbit cautiously approaching the box-trap on the edge of the swamp! ”