METHODS OF FISHING 15 



nation is self evident, and in both Scotland and Ireland, as will be 

 seen, efforts have been and are being made which, without unduly 

 interfering with other classes of fishermen, should secure for them 

 reasonable conditions of existence. 



Thirdly there are the inshore or coastal fisheries carried on almost 

 exclusively inside the territorial limits, partly by landsmen or 

 longshoremen ignorant of the intricacies of boat handling, partly 

 by real seamen whose management of their open or half-decked 

 boats commands the admiration of everyone who has come into 

 contact with them. These men form the lifeboat crews at most of 

 the stations. This class of fisherman does not come into direct 

 competition with the steamers, though the increase of steam trawling 

 in confined waters may produce a permanent diminution of the stock 

 of fish he has to depend on. His chief enemy is the middleman, the 

 so-called " Commission Agent." An appreciable percentage of the 

 earnings of the inshore fisherman '•i derived from the capture and 

 sale of shellfish. To this fact and to their remoteness from the great 

 markets is due their escape from extinction. Often the fishermen 

 themselves or their wives and children hawk the fish in the neigh- 

 bouring towns and villages. " Pleasure sailing " in the summer 

 months and the letting of apartments to visitors are additional 

 sources of livelihood to these men. 



The two chief methods of catching demersal sea fish are by means 

 of a movable or drag net, and by baited hooks attached to lines. 

 Both these methods have been in use from time immemorial. In 

 certain countries, e.g. England, the most modern form of drag-net, 

 the trawl, has superseded the method of catching fish by hooks and 

 lines, at any rate for commercial purposes ; but there are still 

 localities, e.g. certain parts of Scotland and the Grand Banks of 

 Newfoundland, where line fishing is the chief method employed for 

 the capture of demersal fish. It would be interesting, but hardly 

 practicable in a work of this scope, to trace fully the evolution of 

 the trawl from its ancestor the seine. The seine, which is still used 

 in the coastal fisheries, is a semicircular drag-net which is " shot " 

 in such a way as to enclose an area of water close to the shore. One 

 end of the net is attached to a rope, held by a man stationary on 

 the beach, the net being paid out from a boat which returns to the 

 shore at the time the other end of the net is reached. The obvious 

 defects of the net are that it only fishes through a very limited 

 portion of water and it can hardly be used except in shallow water 

 close inshore. It is true that the net has been adapted for fishing 

 away from the shore, in which case two boats were employed. 

 The first improvement in the semicircular seine and the first step 

 in its evolution into a trawl was the insertion of a sleeve or pocket 



