CHAPTER II 



METHODS OF FISHING 



THE evolution of modern methods of sea fishing from the 

 primitive methods of our ancestors has yet to be de- 

 scribed. 

 The earliest accounts of methods of sea fishing of any value 

 are those in Diderot's Encyclopedic (1751-77) and by Duhamel,^ 

 who has written an interesting and well-illustrated account of the 

 sea fisheries of the eighteenth century, more particularly of France 

 and the French colonies. The early forms of trawl, drift-net and 

 trammel are figured and described, and there is a full account of 

 the methods of catching and curing cod on the Grand Banks of 

 Newfoundland and the coast of Labrador. The chief defect in this 

 work is the absence of any adequate reference to, or description of, 

 the deep-sea herring fisheries, which, however, were not participated 

 in to any extent by the French. 



Other accounts of methods of sea fishing, illustrated with 

 drawings of boats, nets and gear have been published, for Ireland, 

 by Brabazon,* in 1847, for the British Isles, by Holdsworth,^ in 

 1874 and for the beam-trawl fishery of Great Britain, by the United 

 States Fish Bureau in 1887.* 



Modern methods of catching sea fish on a large scale fall naturally 

 into one of three sections, (i) A method involving the use of a 

 movable or drag net, the highest modern development of which 

 is the so-called otter trawl. (2) A method involving the use of a 

 fixed or floating net, the most effective of which is the drift-net, 

 employed in modern steam fishing boats. It will readily be under- 

 stood that in the first method the net encircles and captures the 

 fish, whereas in the second the fish swim into the net and are en- 



' Descriptions des Arts et M4tiers,faiies ou approuvdes par messieurs de I'Acadimie 

 Royale des Sciences de Paris, Nouvelle Edition, Tome V. Contenant les trots premiires 

 sections du traiti des pSches et I'histoire des poissons, Neuchatel, 1776. Tome X. 

 Contenant les deux premiires sections de la seconde partie du TraM des piches, Neu- 

 chatel, 1779. 



* The Deep Sea and Coast Fisheries of Ireland, Dublin, 1847. See also a report by 

 Capt. Washington on the " Loss of Life and Damage caused to Fishing Boats in 

 the Gale of August, 1848, for numerous drawings to scale of contemporary fishing 

 boats." Printed by order of the House of Commons, July, 1849. 



' Deep Sea Fishing and Fishing Boats, London, 1874. 



* Fish Bulletin, 1887. 



