Doc asked about cast nets. Here is what I know.
It has been a while since I played around with cast nets. I experimented with them when I realized that there were plenty of small fish around which could be eaten or used for bait. I normally caught and ate big fish that could be filleted and boned easily, but Id learned to process smaller fish and found they were good to eat. Thats another topic though.
A cast net is a more-or-less circular net with a rope attached to it. You throw it over a school of small fish or prawns then haul it in.
There is a bolt rope tied around the circumference of the net. This is typically a strong bit of cord that will be somewhat thicker than the twine that the net is made from. Attached to the bolt rope are some regularly spaced weights to enable the net to sink. The more weight, the quicker the net should sink and the more likely you may be to catch certain fish.
As far as I am aware, there are two ways of helping to ensure that the fish get trapped in the net as it closes over them. The theoretical best way is to have drawstrings, which Ill explain..... and the other is to have pockets.
The drawstring net. This requires the net to have a hole at its very center..... and this hole may be created by having a special donut made of wood or plastic which is tightly bound to the hole at the center. The donut really needs to have a groove cut around its circumference to allow the net to be bound to it securely. If you pick up the net by holding the donut, the donut will then be at the apex of the cone formed as the net lifts from the center. There might be 12 draw strings. These are of equal length. They are tied to the bolt rope (evenly spaced out around the outer circumference of the net) and pass along the underside of the net and come out through the donut with about a foot to spare. All the drawstrings are then tied together, and the tether rope is tied to the bunch of drawstrings.
If your net is eight feet in diameter, then each drawstring might be around five feet in length.
When you throw a cast net with drawstrings, it should land flat over the top of the fish. It will then sink. As it sinks, it goes from a flat shape, to a cone shape. If the water is deep enough, the weights will completely come together. As the fisherman pulls the tether cord, the draw strings pull up the circumference of the net inside the net. When the weights get pulled right up to the donut, they cant pass through it and the fish are trapped.
The drawstring net is a wonderful theory, and maybe some folks have great success with it. But I found that it was not practical to use. You had to make sure the draw strings didnt tangle or catch on anything and it was just too much trouble. Perhaps being used by an expert over deep, still water with a flat sandy bottom it is the ideal type of net.
I prefer the pocket style of cast net. Much simpler.
This net doesnt have a donut. The tether cord is simply bound to the apex of the net (the center of the net). Every two feet or so around the outer circumference, the bolt rope is lifted maybe six or eight inches up inside the net (i.e. the underside of the net) and it is tied to the net wall. This creates a series of crude pockets..... or maybe more correctly, it creates one continuous wavy pocket around the inside of the bottom of the net. You throw this net over the fish, it sinks and forms a cone.... as you pull it up the fish roll down the wall of the net and are theoretically caught in the pockets.
I made a couple of cast nets from commercial netting. This particular netting had a mesh size of maybe an inch. I did not cut a circle from the net. For a start the net I had wasnt big enough to give me an eight foot circle..... plus it is very hard to keep a bit of netting evenly stretched to cut an even shape from it.
I made my net from six equilateral triangles of net. I did not simply cut out the triangles like a bit of dress fabric, I carefully counted the meshes to keep all the triangles the same size. A professional net maker explained the process to me, but I cant recall exactly what I did. I may have some diagrams somewhere, but right now I dont know where they are. I do recall having a simple understanding in mind that sometimes you were cutting a bar and sometimes you were cutting something else (called a knot or a mesh maybe)..... If you look at a net you will see that some sides of the mesh have a knot in them, and some dont. When you have designed a net you know the exact size of the mesh, so by counting the meshes rather than measuring you are much more likely to get the shape of net you are after. It is impractical to simply lay the net out flat and to cut a triangle from it because the tension in the net will hardly ever be even and things will pull out of shape. The design calculations were fairly simple as I recall, but I cant really explain them without my diagrams or a bit of net in front of me.
My net was made from what I recall to be a spun, three-ply synthetic. I laced the sections together using a spun polyester bag stitching thread. I tried using the proper net twine, but it was too slippery to hold a knot properly. Maybe I was using the wrong knots, but Im danged if I can see how any net knot would hold in this stuff.
For weights I used ball sinkers. I made the holes bigger in the lead sinkers by driving heavy nails through them.
I used my cast nets only a few times. They were very easy to get snagged. One of the first times I threw one, it got caught on a big, rough, shell-covered rock and I had to dive in to clear it. It got quite damaged.
Cast nets would work best over a flat bottom with minimum obstructions.
Frankly I think I would prefer to buy a ready-made monofilament cast net. I think it would be less likely to snag compared to the fibrous synthetic cord in my existing nets.
Ive had a quick browse of the web and there seems to be plenty of information around on using these nets. Here is some advice from one of my neighbors downunder:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/961061/how_to_throw_a_baitnet_castnet/
Maybe someone with more experience can offer something else here.
Best wishes for the New Year..... Coote.
It has been a while since I played around with cast nets. I experimented with them when I realized that there were plenty of small fish around which could be eaten or used for bait. I normally caught and ate big fish that could be filleted and boned easily, but Id learned to process smaller fish and found they were good to eat. Thats another topic though.
A cast net is a more-or-less circular net with a rope attached to it. You throw it over a school of small fish or prawns then haul it in.
There is a bolt rope tied around the circumference of the net. This is typically a strong bit of cord that will be somewhat thicker than the twine that the net is made from. Attached to the bolt rope are some regularly spaced weights to enable the net to sink. The more weight, the quicker the net should sink and the more likely you may be to catch certain fish.
As far as I am aware, there are two ways of helping to ensure that the fish get trapped in the net as it closes over them. The theoretical best way is to have drawstrings, which Ill explain..... and the other is to have pockets.
The drawstring net. This requires the net to have a hole at its very center..... and this hole may be created by having a special donut made of wood or plastic which is tightly bound to the hole at the center. The donut really needs to have a groove cut around its circumference to allow the net to be bound to it securely. If you pick up the net by holding the donut, the donut will then be at the apex of the cone formed as the net lifts from the center. There might be 12 draw strings. These are of equal length. They are tied to the bolt rope (evenly spaced out around the outer circumference of the net) and pass along the underside of the net and come out through the donut with about a foot to spare. All the drawstrings are then tied together, and the tether rope is tied to the bunch of drawstrings.
If your net is eight feet in diameter, then each drawstring might be around five feet in length.
When you throw a cast net with drawstrings, it should land flat over the top of the fish. It will then sink. As it sinks, it goes from a flat shape, to a cone shape. If the water is deep enough, the weights will completely come together. As the fisherman pulls the tether cord, the draw strings pull up the circumference of the net inside the net. When the weights get pulled right up to the donut, they cant pass through it and the fish are trapped.
The drawstring net is a wonderful theory, and maybe some folks have great success with it. But I found that it was not practical to use. You had to make sure the draw strings didnt tangle or catch on anything and it was just too much trouble. Perhaps being used by an expert over deep, still water with a flat sandy bottom it is the ideal type of net.
I prefer the pocket style of cast net. Much simpler.
This net doesnt have a donut. The tether cord is simply bound to the apex of the net (the center of the net). Every two feet or so around the outer circumference, the bolt rope is lifted maybe six or eight inches up inside the net (i.e. the underside of the net) and it is tied to the net wall. This creates a series of crude pockets..... or maybe more correctly, it creates one continuous wavy pocket around the inside of the bottom of the net. You throw this net over the fish, it sinks and forms a cone.... as you pull it up the fish roll down the wall of the net and are theoretically caught in the pockets.
I made a couple of cast nets from commercial netting. This particular netting had a mesh size of maybe an inch. I did not cut a circle from the net. For a start the net I had wasnt big enough to give me an eight foot circle..... plus it is very hard to keep a bit of netting evenly stretched to cut an even shape from it.
I made my net from six equilateral triangles of net. I did not simply cut out the triangles like a bit of dress fabric, I carefully counted the meshes to keep all the triangles the same size. A professional net maker explained the process to me, but I cant recall exactly what I did. I may have some diagrams somewhere, but right now I dont know where they are. I do recall having a simple understanding in mind that sometimes you were cutting a bar and sometimes you were cutting something else (called a knot or a mesh maybe)..... If you look at a net you will see that some sides of the mesh have a knot in them, and some dont. When you have designed a net you know the exact size of the mesh, so by counting the meshes rather than measuring you are much more likely to get the shape of net you are after. It is impractical to simply lay the net out flat and to cut a triangle from it because the tension in the net will hardly ever be even and things will pull out of shape. The design calculations were fairly simple as I recall, but I cant really explain them without my diagrams or a bit of net in front of me.
My net was made from what I recall to be a spun, three-ply synthetic. I laced the sections together using a spun polyester bag stitching thread. I tried using the proper net twine, but it was too slippery to hold a knot properly. Maybe I was using the wrong knots, but Im danged if I can see how any net knot would hold in this stuff.
For weights I used ball sinkers. I made the holes bigger in the lead sinkers by driving heavy nails through them.
I used my cast nets only a few times. They were very easy to get snagged. One of the first times I threw one, it got caught on a big, rough, shell-covered rock and I had to dive in to clear it. It got quite damaged.
Cast nets would work best over a flat bottom with minimum obstructions.
Frankly I think I would prefer to buy a ready-made monofilament cast net. I think it would be less likely to snag compared to the fibrous synthetic cord in my existing nets.
Ive had a quick browse of the web and there seems to be plenty of information around on using these nets. Here is some advice from one of my neighbors downunder:
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/961061/how_to_throw_a_baitnet_castnet/
Maybe someone with more experience can offer something else here.
Best wishes for the New Year..... Coote.
