[f. TRAWL sb. or v. + NET sb.1]
1. A fishing-net used in trawling; esp. = TRAWL sb. 1.
1696. Phil. Trans., XIX. 350. Here [Lincolnshire] are also good plenty of large Soals, taken in Troul-Nets, the Smacks being under Sail trailing them along.
1769. Pennant, Zool., III. 190. They [soles] are usually taken in the trawl-net; they keep much at the bottom.
1834. Tait’s Mag., I. 125/2. The trawl-net scrapes along the ground; and as the flat fish breed in the channel, it appears that much injury and destruction has been done to the young fry when the trawl has been used near the shore.
1880. Chambers’s Encycl., IX. 525/1. Smaller trawl-nets than those above described are used in bays and estuaries.
2. Sc. and U.S. Applied (erroneously) to a kind of seine-net used to surround and enclose shoals of herring and other fish.
1855. Zoologist, XIII. 4670. The trawl-nets in Loch Fine.
1864. Glasgow Daily Herald, 24 Sept. I think the trawl men might be content if they were allowed to use their trawl nets inshore without taking them into deep water.
¶ See also TROLLNET, with quot. 1558.
