SEALS AND SALMON NETS 

 W. M. Shearer 



Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory, Pitlochry 



About i,6oo tons of salmon valued at ^£1,250,000 are caught each year by 

 the Scottish commercial salmon nets. The industry employs about 2,000 

 active fishermen but many more men are employed in the ancillary trades. 

 Commercial salmon nets are operated on the coast, in estuaries and, in a few 

 instances, in rivers above the head of tide. On the coast the three main types 

 of nets used are bag-, fly- and jumper-nets while in estuaries and freshwater, 

 sweep nets are employed. 



The three types of coastal nets are basically of the same design. They 

 consist essentially of two parts, a leader and a trap. The leader is merely a 

 curtain of netting which stretches seaward at right angles to the shore and 

 its seaward end is attached to the middle of the entrance to the trap. It has 

 the effect of directing a shoal of salmon moving along the coast seawards 

 into the trap. The main difference between these three types of nets is the 

 way they are set to fish. The bag-net is set to float just below the surface of 

 the water on rocky coasts, it is kept in position by anchors and floats and is 

 fished by coble (boat). The other two types are set on sandy beaches, are held 

 in position by stakes driven into the sand and are fished at low tide without 

 a boat. The bag-net is by far the commonest of these three types of net. 



Although bag-nets vary in size at different parts of the coast an average- 

 sized net would be about 50 ft long while the leader would be about 200 ft 

 long. The bag-net proper consists of three chambers. The chamber furthest 

 from the shore, where the fish are caught, is known as the fish court. Very 

 roughly it is 18 ft long, 10 ft deep, 7 ft broad at the seaward end increasing to 

 13 ft. The entrance to this chamber (the small door) extends down the whole 

 depth of the net and is about 6 in. wide. It lies at the apex of the inscales and 

 this arrangement is thought to prevent fish escaping as, instead of finding the 

 opening, they fall back into the angles created by the sides of the net and 

 the sides of the inscale. The fish court, like the remainder of the net, is made 

 from cotton twine. Bag-nets are very seldom fished singly; two or more are 

 normally set in line extending seawards for perhaps a quarter of a mile. 



Jumper- and fly-nets are fundamentally of the same design but may be 

 rather smaller. 



