MULTI-RIG trawl specialist Flemming Ruby of Hvide Sande fishing gear supplier Nordso Trawl has established a strong base in Thyboron since buying out the local net loft OK Trawl four years ago.

He also took on much of the staff and stock from the bankrupt Thyboron Trawlbinderi.

He also supplies semi-pelagic and industrial trawl gear.

However, the company's particular line of expertise is the multi-rig bottom trawl gear that Flemming Ruby and his team have been highly successful in developing: up to eight trawls towed on five warps to achieve a massive gear spread with a relatively low headline height.

"Working with eight trawls is a hard job and you need to have 12 nets so that there are enough spares if you do some damage, " he says.

He reports that one Danish trawler owner has recently had an extra two winches fitted on board with the intention of trying out 12 trawls, spread with a clump and three sets of doors on seven warps.

However, towing 12 trawls in a row remains to be tested at sea!

Flemming Ruby tells FNI that there is a steady demand for multi-rig gear and the Dutch market has also been a strong one, especially since much of the beamer fleet there has been hit hard by high fuel prices and is looking for ways to reduce costs or diversify.

He comments that, in designing a set of gear for a trawler, horsepower is always the important figure to start working from. However, increasingly operators are setting a specified fuel consumption and this is the baseline figure that the gear is designed around.

Flemming Ruby sells in Holland and Belgium through Den Oever-based agent Arjaan Willeboordse. He says that his latest customer, the Zeebrugge beam trawler Soetkin, has been fishing well using twin-rig trawl gear, showing some substantial reductions in fuel consumption.

He tells FNI: "We will be seeing a lot more beam trawlers switching to this.

Beam trawling is just too expensive to keep up and the cost of fuel is too high for these boats to operate profitably."

When Enterprise (PD-147), one of the largest beam trawlers, switched to twin-rig trawling combined with seine netting, all of the boat's gear came from Nordso Trawl.

"They were able to get to learn trawling with two trawls quite quickly and they were also determined to get seine netting to work and did so as well, even though it's not an easy method to learn, " says Flemming Ruby.

"They bought the whole package from us: two seine nets, one of which was a highlift net that can also be used on flats, as well as three trawls for twin-rigging."

He tells FNI that recently he bought Ifremer's DynamiT trawl simulation software and this has brought with it numerous advantages, not least that it is possible to show a skipper how his gear will look in the water.

"If we have a customer interested in a quad-rig system, we can show him the whole system with all four nets, as DynamiT allows us to use up to 16 nets. Arjaan in Holland also has this software so that he can show his customers as well."

He comments that, while DynamiT has been a useful tool, to begin with there were problems in getting to grips with the new software.

"It was impossible to do it here. You sit down and start working on it and then the phone rings, then somebody comes in and asks for something. It wasn't until one of the boys here took the program home and worked with it in the evenings that it came together.

"It took a while, but it's worth it. DynamiT is a really super program and it offers lots of possibilities, such as double bosom and double bags nets and, also, allows you to design your own meshes, such as hexagonal mesh, so there are lots of possibilities with it."

Sandeel gear's hex meshes

THE possibilities of hexagonal meshes have been explored in a new version of Nordso Trawl's sandeel gear.

Hex meshes are used for the top and side panels, but keeping the normal diamond meshes in the bottom section. Flemming Ruby of Nordso Trawl tells FNI that the meshes are spliced in Euronete's Super-12 rope, starting with 6.40 metre half mesh in most nets, or even 12.80 metre half mesh in larger gear.

"This net also uses a lot of T90 netting in the aft section.

Some of the industrial trawlers from Thyboron have been using this trawl this season and it has done well, catching better and using less fuel, " he reports.

"This could have been a good season this year, as we have gone four years without a good sandeel season. But, then, the fishery was closed in the middle of the season."

News

Who's first to tow 12 trawls?