SMACKS AND TRAWLS 63 



light ; if it is too heavy you get such a quantity of mud, 

 weed, and stones that you require powerful tackle besides 

 all hands to get the net on board, but you at the same 

 time catch plenty of fish. If you do not weight it suffi- 

 ciently your net does not drag the bottom nor open 

 properly, so you catch no fish, as the cork head-rope 

 and the leaded foot-rope come together. I found my 

 net, after altering the leading twice, go quite right, and 

 catch double the quantity of fish that the professional 

 trawlers here catch with the beam-trawl. My head-rope 

 is 42 ft. long, foot-rope the same ; at every half- 

 fathom of foot-rope I wrap a piece of sheet-lead round 

 once and a half ; when all is on, I serve the whole foot- 

 rope over with one strand of an old Manilla hawser, 

 which makes it very thick and prevents it cutting into 

 the mud too much ; I think if I did not it would pick up 

 a fourpenny bit." 



A primitive form of the otter-trawl is recognised in 

 many places on the east coast of Scotland as the most 

 deadly of all forms of trout-fishing. A Scotchman who 

 explained the method to me, with the warning that the 

 practice of the plan involved hard labour, if discovered, 

 said that the principal apparatus needful is half a barrel- 

 head. To the centre of this a weight is attached lead, 

 iron, or other metal and to each end of the barrel-head 

 is fastened a line, the two lines forming a bridle. A 

 line, corresponding to a trawl-warp, is attached to the 

 bridle, and to this warp is fastened hooks bearing flies. 

 My informant, who had often seen the device in opera- 

 tion by other people under his own direction spoke 

 enthusiastically of the results. The system, he declared, 

 succeeds when all other plans fail. He swore by it just 



