catalog is so helpful. Connecticut at one time contained many factories for the production of webbing such as CoFish™ in Haddam and Brownell Twine™ in Moodus. To send customers the correct amount of webbing from which to make a net, they maintained a catalog of net plans and made storage suggestions on page 12. (1932)
“A foul, wet net piled up under a tight cover may be quickly ruined by bacteria and mildew. This has caused serious losses to fishermen, especially in warm weather. The Bureau of Fisheries has previously recommended washing shad gill nets with lime water – 1.5 lbs of slack lime in 12 gallons of water. After fish are removed from the net, plenty of lime water should be thrown over the webbings, which should be then rinsed with clear water, either salt or fresh. No known preservative (coal tar, pine tar, Hemlock bark juice or copper sulfate) will protect nets against damage from lack of cleanliness or careless storage.”
Elaborate net reels were constructed to dry the very fine linen, shad gill nets and cotton haul seines along the Essex Connecticut shore. When modern synthetics were invented in the late1930s and by the 1950s, nylon and monofilament net webbing soon replaced natural fibers as they were consumed by bacteria. As gear became worn out it was just simply discarded and unfortunately within the net plan designs. Lobster traps for example once all wood with manila funnels simply rotted away. After 1960 webbing distributors mostly stopped providing net plans.
In 2002 a historic discovery of the Daniels fish traps of Hamburg Cove was detailed by the Connecticut River Museum (see fyke net fact sheet CT River Fyke Nets and Long Haul Seines found in Lyme, CT 2002). It was a rare opportunity to look at they very gears described by CT Biennial Reports of the last century used in Connecticut River Fisheries. It is to my knowledge the largest intact fyke net collection ever documented in New England. Net plans from these fykes were very similar to a American Net and Twine Plan (1920).
A Fyke Net Plan – circa 1920 (Daniels Net Equivalent)
A Double Throat Fyke (2 Funnels) page 53
6 Foot Fyke
1) Body (Barrel) front 44 meshes long by 140 meshes around
2) Funnel 30 meshes long by 140 meshes around
3) Body (Back) 90 meshes long by 180 meshes around
4) Funnel (Back) 35 meshes long by 180 meshes around
5) Front Funnel (Throat) set in 1.5 meshes from the front first circular hoop (on the round) second funnel set in at junction between barrel and back
All 2.25 inch mesh is thread medium
1 6 foot bow hoop – first hoop often flat to help stabilize the roll is called a “bow” (rainbow shape)
3 6 foot wood hoops – circular steamed sapling
1 5 foot wood hoop – circular steamed sapling
Total 5 hoop fyke series Bow 6, 6, 6, 5
22 meshes between the first two hoops
30 meshes between the last three hoops
Sewn tapered funnels could be “soft” or “hard”
Hard funnels ended in a ring – similar to lobster traps today – the first funnel ring had a 18 inch wood ring. The second funnel was a 15 inch wood diameter ring.
Two wings 42 meshes deep by 120 meshes taken up by a third.
Leader various lengths also hung on a third but larger mesh from leader end – 6”, 5”, 4” larger meshes tended to let leaves and seaweed pass. However from time to time terrestrial leaves and marine seaweed could completely fill fykes, or in heavy tides, rip them from setting stakes.
With the records now being made available by Google™ in cooperation with the University of California at Berkley who is slowly making available the entire series of the Connecticut Biennial Reports of Fish and Game online and in doing so enabling the habitat/placement of these key fishing gears to date.
For example The State of Connecticut Biennial 1901-02 report contains this section for fish reports for the lower Connecticut River.
1901-02 Four fishing companies were operating Fyke and Cove Nets in the lower Connecticut River.
C.V. Miller, Lyme Fish caught. 600 suckers, 300 eels, 75 flat, 50 perch, 500 frost, 45 striped bass.
James Daniels Hamburg Fish caught. 545 pickerel, 1,700 perch