Fish may be captured with spear, trap, line or net. Which of these methods is employed necessarily depends very much upon the size and habits of the fish, and upon the skill and available equipment of the fishermen.

Spears and traps were used in prehistoric times and survive to this day in various forms, e.g. harpoons, lobster pots, hedge baulks, fishing weirs and the various ingenious traps and entanglements that are used by primitive races in all parts of the world. The logical development of the spear and the trap into the line and the net was made possible by the invention of string.

To design and construct a trap, it is generally necessary to know something of the habits of the fish to be caught. Hedge-baulks and fishing weirs are fairly extensive enclosures made of brushwood, basket work, stakes or stones, constructed on the foreshore in such a way that at high tide the sea carries the fish into the enclosure and leaves them there when it recedes. These fishing weirs are probably the primitive origin of most forms of fishing nets.

The crab or lobster pot or creel is constructed of basket-work, in shape somewhat like a safety inkpot, so that the lobster or crab can easily enter it, but, once in, is unable to escape. Lobster pots, suitably baited with fish and weighted, are distributed over the fishing ground—a rocky bottom full of crevices—from small, open boats, and are gathered the next day.

Fishing with hook and line is also a very ancient method. Before the discovery of metals, the hooks were made of bone. Some people—notably the Chinese—frequently use unbaited hooks, and rely upon the jerk of the hook at the right moment to secure the fish. Generally, however, the hook is suitably baited, the method being used chiefly for fish that seek their food by scent or sight, e.g. cod and shark. Line fishing for cod is still employed on a large scale off the North of Scotland and the coast of Newfoundland.

In lining, the fish are caught individually. A “line” may be as much as seven miles long. Short pieces of line from two to three feet long are attached to it at regular intervals. These lines are called the “snoods,” and carry the hooks. The line is usually shot at night, and fished in the morning. In most cases line fishing is rapidly being superseded by trawling.

The invention of netting marked a notable advance in the primitive development of the fishing industry. The net in all its various forms and applications is the characteristic and all-important implement of the fishing industry. A net may be used either to surround a fish and drag it out of the water, as in seining or trawling, or it may be used to enmesh the fish, as in drift netting. The rise and development of the sea fishing industry has been due very largely to the gradually improved efficiency of the net.

Nets were originally used on the shore. A long strip of netting was attached to upright stakes, to form an enclosure with an opening towards the sea, constructed like a fishing weir in such a way that the fish enter the enclosure at high tide and are unable to escape. Such devices constructed on shore are known as “fixed engines”; they include stake nets, poke nets, stream nets and purse nets. The net may simply form the wall of an enclosure (stake net). This enclosure may be furnished with a pocket at one corner (poke net). It may consist essentially of one long, deep pocket kept open by rings or stakes at intervals (purse and hose nets). It may be simply a wall of netting into which the fish thrust their heads; owing to their gill openings they are unable to withdraw and so become entangled (stream net).

The first development of a movable net was the seine or drag net. The seine is a semi-circular drag net, which is shot in shallow water so as to enclose an area of water close to the shore. It is then hauled ashore, and gathers up the fish that are in the enclosed area of water. Such a net is limited to inshore use. Generally, a line is attached to each end of the net. The free end of one of these lines is made fast to the shore by a stake, and the net is paid out from a small boat. When the whole of the net has been paid out, the boat travels round until the net forms a semi-circle of which the diameter is parallel to the shore; the net is then hauled in.

The seine net was used in ancient times by Phoenicians, Greeks, and other Mediterranean peoples. Various types of seines are in common use to-day. In Denmark a seine net is employed to catch eels and plaice. On the Cornish coast pilchards are caught with a large seine up to two hundred fathoms long and eight fathoms deep. In the United States a seine is used in water of any depth to catch mackerel. Rings are attached to the foot-rope of the net, and by passing a line through these rings and drawing it tight, the net is transformed into a bowl of netting. This is called the purse seine.

The seine was first improved by the addition of a pocket at its centre. Then the sides or wings were gradually lengthened, until finally it developed into a deep, conical, bag-shaped net, furnished with long arms or wings. This was dragged along the bottom, behind a boat in full sail. The net was weighted and its mouth kept open by attaching its upper edge to a beam of wood (beam trawl). When the net was full of fish, it was run ashore. Ultimately, instead of drawing the net ashore, the fishermen remained at sea and hauled the net on board with a winch. In this way the seine net gradually developed into the trawl net. The trawl net marked a big improvement, for it could be fished in deeper water further from shore, and thus greatly increased the scope of fishing operations, and led to the rapid growth and improvement of demersal 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.

In 1870, there were a thousand first-class smacks in the North Sea, three hundred in the English Channel, and over a hundred in the Irish Sea.

The smacks were fitted with a tank in the well of the ship, in which the fish were kept in sea-water and brought in alive. In Denmark to-day, plaice are brought ashore and sold alive.

The subsequent development of trawl fishing has been in the construction of larger nets, worked by more powerful trawling vessels driven by steam.

The size of beam trawl that can be worked by a large sailing smack is limited by the trawling power of the vessel, and also by the difficulty of constructing and handling very long beams. The maximum length of beam in general use by sailing smacks is fifty feet. The length of the net, from its mouth to the narrow of “cod” end, rarely exceeds a hundred feet. To each end of the beam is attached a triangular trawl-head of iron, which moves along the ground and serves to keep the beam about three and a half feet above the ground. These trawl crossheads are attached to the ship by bridles and warp.

The upper edge of the net is attached to the beam, the lower edge being attached to a stout rope—the foot-rope—the ends of which are made fast to the crossheads. This foot-rope, being considerably longer than the beam, sweeps along the ground abaft of the beam, to form a deep curve known as the “bosom” of the net. The result is that, when the foot-rope disturbs the fish so that they leap to avoid it, the beam has passed on overhead and they leap into the net.

Pockets are formed in the sides of the net by lacing the top and bottom together for about two-thirds of the distance from the mouth of the net towards the cod end. The mouth of a pocket is at the cod end of the net, so that fish reaching the cod end and attempting to return to the mouth of the net, generally enter the pockets. A flap of netting suspended some distance inside the mouth of the net serves as a valve. It is easily lifted by the incoming fish, but tends to prevent their escape.

The netting is of hemp, the mesh gradually increasing from one inch at the cod end to about two inches near the mouth, and is preserved with tar.

When fishing, the vessel moves ahead at a steady, slow rate of from two to three miles per hour, dragging the trawl behind it. Smacks always trawl with the tide. If they trawl against the tide, the net is lifted from the ground.

During fishing the cod end is closed by the cod line, but at the conclusion of the trawl the net is hoisted aboard, mouth upwards, and the contents are discharged upon the deck by drawing the cod line.

The otter trawl that is used by modern steam trawlers is from seventy to one hundred and twenty feet wide across the mouth, according to the character of the fishing, and a hundred and ten feet long from the mouth to the cod end. The otter trawl is shown in Fig. 17. It differs from the beam trawl in that its mouth is kept open, not by being attached to a beam, but by otter boards, which are attached one to each side of the mouth of the net. These are attached to the net and to the warps by which the net is towed in such a way that the pressure of the water upon them causes them to diverge, thus keeping the mouth of the net open. The size of a beam trawl is necessarily limited by the length of beam obtainable. The size of the otter trawl, however, is obviously only limited by the power of the steam trawler. The otter boards measure 11 ft. by 4 ft. 6 ins., are shod with iron, and weigh 15 cwts. each. The warps, as the ropes are called which attach the otter boards to the ship, are from three hundred to a thousand fathoms long—generally a little over three times as long as the depth of the water in which the trawl is to be used. Each board is attached to the steamer by a separate warp. The upper edge of the mouth of the net is attached to a strong rope, called the “head” rope. The lower edge of the mouth of the net is also attached to a strong rope, called the “foot” rope. As in the beam trawl, the foot rope is considerably longer than the head line, and forms a bosom. Traps and pockets also are inserted in the sides of the net. When trawling on rough ground, the foot rope is furnished with large, heavy, wooden rollers, called the “bobbins.”

Trawl fishing, until quite recently, was almost entirely confined to demersal fish, such as cod, plaice, haddock and halibut. In recent years, however, considerable quantities of herring have been caught by trawlers.

Drifting. The drift net is essentially a completely submerged, vertical curtain of netting, one end of which is attached to a boat called a drifter. The net extends in a straight line from the boat, and may be as much as three miles long. Unlike the trawl net, the drift net generally catches one kind of fish only—either herring or mackerel—drift net fishing being carried on at a time when these fish come together in shoals near the surface for the purpose of spawning. The trawl obviously only captures fish living at the bottom. At the same time, of course, it captures all the fish at the bottom, whether immature, or useless star fish, etc. The drift net, on the other hand, is generally used for a particular kind of fish—herring, mackerel, sprat—and only catches fish above a certain size.

A drifter may be as much as 90 ft. long, with 20 ft. beam and 10 ft. draught. Its foremast is so constructed that it may be lowered when the vessel is steaming against a head wind, or when it is fishing. The ordinary sailing drifter is rapidly being superseded by the steam drifter, partly because the greater power of the steam driven boat increases its capacity and scope, and, further, owing to the centralization of the industry at a few big ports at certain times of the year, these harbours are so crowded that it is almost impossible to handle a sailing drifter in them. Many of the larger sailing drifters have been equipped with petrol engines which largely discount this disadvantage. A steam drifter can travel at from 11 to 12 knots, and both steamers and sailers carry a fishing crew of seven men and a boy.

Inshore Fisheries. The development of steam fishing—trawling and drifting—has resulted in the re-grouping of the fishing industry into two well-marked divisions. Fisheries, whether trawling, drifting or lining, that are carried on in deep water far from shore in large steamers, for the most part owned by limited liability companies, are known as offshore fisheries. The fisheries of the seashore, carried on by small, privately-owned, sailing smacks and cutters within territorial waters, are distinguished by the term “inshore fisheries.” The inshore fisheries are mainly for shellfish, crabs, lobsters, shrimps and immature deep sea fish such as plaice, soles, flounders, dabs, codling and sprats.

Shrimps and whiting are caught with trawl nets of 25 ft. beam or less, and of about ¹/₄ in. mesh. The net is generally drawn behind a small cutter, but frequently it is used in shallow water with a horse and cart. These nets are generally made of flax or cotton, and are either tanned or tarred, in order to preserve them.

Smaller, fine-meshed, trawl nets are used for catching shrimps and also immature plaice, soles and dabs. These shrimp nets are either attached to a long handle and pushed through the water in front of the fisherman (push nets), or drawn behind a small boat or a horse and cart (trawl nets).

Larger fish are sometimes caught in shallow water by casting a net over the fish so as to enclose it (cast nets). The fisherman of the Eastern Mediterranean uses a cast net with conspicuous skill. The net is essentially a circular disc of netting, to the circumference of which small weights are attached at regular intervals. A cord is attached to the centre of the net, and the fisherman, standing knee-deep in the water, grasps the net by its centre, swinging it round his head, and casts it so that as it approaches the water it opens out, and with a soft splash sinks through the water until it lies outstretched over the fish. It is then drawn up by the string attached to its centre, and the weighted edges fall together enclosing the fish.

Fish are often caught on shores and in rivers by causing them to pass between converging walls of stakes or basket work, until they enter an enclosure, the floor of which is covered by a net. When the fish have gathered in the enclosure, the net is pulled up.

The simplest form of inshore fishery is that for periwinkles, in which they are simply picked off the rock. Mussels live on the sea bottom, on the lower half of the foreshore. They generally attach themselves to a stone by a thread. They are usually collected at low tide by hand or, when submerged, are raked from the bottom. The rake is from 2 to 3 ft. wide, and is furnished with teeth 10 ins. long, the back of the rake being covered with netting. Sometimes the mussels are submerged even at low water and then a short rake is used.

Cockles live about an inch or so below the surface of the sand, and maintain a connection with the water above by means of small tunnels in the sand. They occur abundantly in many places between high and low watermark. When the cockles are abundant they are raked out of the sand, the rake being from 10 ins. to 1 ft. wide, with teeth 1 in. long. The cockles are riddled, the small ones being rejected. When the cockles do not exist in such large numbers, they are obtained by means of a “jumbo.” This is essentially a block of wood, 3 or 4 ft. long, and 1 ft. wide, furnished with two upright handles. The jumbo is rocked to and fro on the surface of the sand, with the result that the cockles are gradually worked up to the surface.