Trawling Methods

Beam Trawl
The early trawlers used a Beam Trawl. This consisted of a triangular-shaped net with the top of the net attached to a beam.

The lower portion of the net would be weighted and allowed to drag along the seabed. The beam, which could be up to 50 feet in length was fixed to two iron frames called shoes which held the beam in position and stopped the net from rising or sinking.

The whole trawl was attached to a warp, which could be over 600ft long, to two rope bridles of around 90 feet in length one attached to each trawl head.

The beam trawl was good for catching flat fish and other fish that lived close to the bottom of the sea.

Over the years this type of trawl became obsolete for larger trawlers though it remains in use on inshore fishing boats and in more recent years its use has been revived on trawlers now known as ‘beamers’.

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Beam Trawl

Otter Trawl
A further development in trawling was the Otter Trawl. The beam and shoes of a beam trawl were replaced by ‘wings’ added to the mouth of the net and by two wooden, iron-clad ‘doors’, one attached to each ‘wing’.

As the net was pulled through the water the doors pushed upwards and outwards serving to keep the mouth of the net open. A much wider mouth was possible compared to a beam trawl and the net was easier to handle when shooting and hauling.

This type of trawling required significant power, making it ideally suited to the steam trawlers. It was not effective with sail power because the mouth would collapse if the wind dropped and the vessel lost speed. By 1890 most steam trawlers had moved away from beam trawling and gone over to otter trawls.

Later the trawl doors were connected to the net by long bridles, a modification known as Vigneron Dahl after the inventor of this type of fishing gear. The use of bridles allowed the doors to spread out wider and turbulence created by the cables as they moved through the water herded more fish into the net.

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