As the annual blue whiting season approaches for Western Europe’s pelagic fleet, Killybegs-based fishing gear designer and manufacturer Swan Net-Gundry Ltd (SNG) continues to reinforce its international reputation for designing and manufacturing a full range of pelagic gear.
Based on their own successful SNG designs which are constantly being improved, SNG’s pelagic trawl range includes the traditional designed right and left lay twisted twine front-end trawl, the ever-reliable Hex trawl and the successful self-spreading trawls.
With mackerel fisheries underway, the focus will soon turn briefly to herring before targeting blue whiting for which SNG’s trawl designs enjoys great popularity amongst the leading pelagic operators of all sizes of vessel. The 2018 blue whiting season was a highly successful one for SNG’s customers, thanks to the new range of trawl designs and brailers
For their blue whiting trawls, SNG manufacture using three well-known material options in the front end. Helix trawls are made in hydrodynamic self-spreading twine. This has brought cutting-edge technology to SNG’s blue whiting trawls, and Helix gear has become the most popular choice.
PE/PA is also an option, as is Pelix – similar to PE/PA, but specifically used for pelagic pair trawlers fishing blue whiting. This the elasticity needed to cope with the extra stress and strain of a pair team, but it is still finished with an outer cover in polyethylene for ease of shooting and hauling.
‘In just one example of the many pelagic vessels using SNG’s blue whiting gear, the catch records from the Scottish vessel Antares LK419 are a testament to our new product range,’ said SNG designer Cathal Boyle, adding that Antares fishes with SNG’s 2355m net. With a horizontal opening of 247 metres and vertical opening of 155 metres, it resulted in a very impressive tunnel opening in the back end.
‘We calculated where the optimum tunnel sensor placement was. We were able to achieve 31% mesh openings, which is a direct result of our newly-designed eight-panel back end to improve water flow, complete with rib lines. These trawls are normally ordered in three sizes: 1800, 2048 and the 2355 metre design.’
With their brailer, SNG have continued their hard work in bringing it to the next level and the new features include a stronger outer triple cover and 46 high strength restricting ropes which are fastened on with their new knot in Nylex twine.
In demand
The constant investment in R&D and employing the latest technology into their trawls has paid off for SNG
‘We have built this up over many years and the feedback that we receive from our customers after the 2017 season and into this year has been outstanding,’ Cathal Boyle, commenting that everything the company does is based on feedback from customers and that advances new requirements and ideas for the trawls.
‘We design trawls to requirements, but we explain all of our new R&D ideas which normally gets the customer interested in the development. As All of SNG designs are drawn to scale, this is a very useful exercise when demonstrating and comparing one trawl against another for the customersR03;’ viewing on screen,’ he said.
