3 
Fig. 4—Commercial fishermen shipping a seine after completing a haul. 
throughout the year. In the D-MR sec- 
tion, large hauls of carp and buffalofishes 
often are taken from under the ice during 
the winter months. The seine enables 
some fishermen in both the D-MR and 
the MR-C sections of the river to take 
paddlefish, carp, buffalofishes, and fresh- 
water drums during periods when few fish 
are being caught in other devices. 
Entrapment Devices 
Entrapment devices used in some or all 
parts of the Caruthersville-Dubuque area 
of the Mississippi River at the time of the 
survey included basket traps, hoop nets, 
wing nets, and trap nets. 
Basket traps are constructed of wooden 
slats and have flexible, wooden throats, 
fig. 5. Fishermen usually bait these traps 
with old cheese scrapings and often in the 
spring they put a live gravid female cat- 
fish in each trap to serve as a decoy for 
unsuspecting males. Basket traps are set 
in current and are fished in water rang- 
ing from 4 to 15 feet in depth. A weight 
is secured to the tail line of each basket 
trap to anchor it in place. Some fisher- 
men fish two basket traps or a basket trap 
and a hoop net by joining the tail lines. 
The basket trap is an important fishing 
device for commercial fishermen of Illi- 
nois and Iowa who fish the Mississipp1. 
The state of Missouri does not permit the 
use of this device. In 1950, Illinois com- 
mercial fishermen of the Mississippi River 
took 52.3 per cent of their reported cat- 
fish catch in basket traps (Starrett & Parr 
1951-5). 
The local terminology often applied to 
hoop nets, wing nets, and trap nets can be 
quite confusing. In one area, a hoop net, 
fig. 6, may be called a buffalo net, in an- 
other a fyke net, and in still another a 
fiddler net. Hoop nets are defined by the 
Upper Midississippi River Conservation 
Committee (1946:13) as a “group of de- 
vices” “constructed of vegetable fiber net- 
