Chiefly Cornish dial., Ir. and Amer. Also 9 spillard (spilliard). [Of obscure origin.]
1. A long fishing-line provided with a number of hooks; a trawl-line.
1602. Carew, Cornwall, 31 b. In Harbor Eeles are taken mostly by Spillers made of a Cord … to which diuers lesser and shorter are tyed at a little distance, and to each of these a hooke is fastened with a bayt. Ibid. This Spiller they sincke in the Sea.
1836. 1st Rep. Irish Fisheries, 151. The line and spillards are the modes of fishing, chiefly practised.
1851. Voy. Mauritius, iv. 160. A line some hundred yards in length, from which depend shorter lines, like an Irish ‘spiller.’
1875. Zoologist, 2nd Ser. X. 4500. A specimen of the torpedo … caught on spillers (hook and line) … near Lamorna [in Cornwall].
attrib. 1836. 1st Rep. Irish Fisheries, 151. The long line, hand line, and spillard fishing grounds.
1900. C. Lee, Cynthia, 81. A group of men … baiting spiller-hooks with cattle.
2. ‘In the mackerel-fishery, a seine inserted into a larger seine to take out the fish.’ Also attrib.
a. 1891. in Nova Scotian use (Cent. Dict.).
1891. Pall Mall Gaz., 10 Sept., 4/1. Supplementing the spring and autumn mackerel fishery by line and spiller seine and trammel with ordinary trawlings.
Hence Spiller v. intr., to fish with spillers.
1836. 1st Rep. Irish Fisheries, 151. Long line fishing, which is a kind of spillarding, is generally practised in hookers.
