Some clients always ask me a question: He want to buy some fishing nets, but he don’t know the materials.
To answer this question, I decide to write a blog about this, and hope it can help you to choose the most suitable material in your market.
Materials to choose
The fishing nets could be made of natural materials and synthetic materials. But as the development of technology, compare to the natural materials, more and more fishermen prefer the synthetic materials.
The most popular materials of fishing nets in the market are :
polyethylene
polypropylene
polyester
polyamide
UHMWPE
Each of these materials has its own unique set of properties that make it well-suited for use in fishing nets. Before that, you should know the properties of them.
what is their proporties
Polyethylene
PE is a strong, durable, and flexible polymer that is resistant to UV radiation, water, and abrasions.
It is known for its high stretch capacity, making it ideal for use in landing larger fish.
The normal strength is about 6g/d. It is also lightweight and easy to carry around.
The biggest advantage is cheap, it could be affordable for most of fishermen.
Polypropylene
PP is another strong and durable polymer that is resistant to UV radiation and water. It is known for its high tensile strength and stiffness, making it ideal for use in more rugged fishing environments.
The strength is close to PE. It is also resistant to chemicals and rot, making it an excellent choice for use in saltwater fishing.
Polyester
Polyester is a synthetic polymer that is known for its strength, durability, and resistance to UV radiation and water. It is also resistant to stretching, making it ideal for use in landing larger fish.
Compared to PE and PP, the biggest characteristic is that polyester is very soft, it can reduce the damage to the fish by the fishing nets.
Another characteristic is that it has higher strength than PP and PE, the strength would be about 8-8.5g/d. It could be more suitable in more terrible application, such as deep sea.
Nylon
Nylon is a synthetic polymer that is known for its strength, durability, and ability to stretch. It is resistant to UV radiation and water, making it ideal for use in a variety of fishing environments.
Its strength is close to polyester. The biggest advantage of nylon is that it has the best water absorption of all materials.
It can increase the sinking speed of the nets during fishing. This is very important in some fishing nets, such as purse seine nets.
UHMWPE
it is also called Ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene, it is a type of polymer that is known for its extreme strength and durability.
It has the best mechanical properties and chemical properties of all the materials. It is called as king of plastic. The strength is about 35g/d, about 5 times of other materials.
Because it has much higher strength in same weight, so in the same weight, the weight of UHMWPE fishing net could be about 1/4-1/6 of fishing net made of other materials.
The applications of these materials
Now, You might be a litte clear about the properties of these materials. Another question for you might be: what kind of fishing nets are these materials generally used in?
Polyethylene
Polyethylene could be used as trawl nets. Many clients choose the polyethylene twisted net or polyethylene braided nets to make the trawl net.
Especially the braided net, it has good abrasion resistance and can adapt to the complex marine environment, this is very important for bottom trawl.
Another application for polyethylene is fish cage nets. Some clients also choose the PE knotless net to make the fish cage nets.
it is very popular in the lake and river, where the environment is not particularly harsh.
Another popular application is many kind of trap for crab, shrimp and fish.
PP
The normal application of polypropylene is similar with polyethylene. The most popular applications are also trawling net for the inshore and offshore fishing, as well as for aquaculture.
If you want to buy some nets for your trawling net, maybe polyethylene and polypropylene are both your good choice.
Everyone has their own preferences, some people prefer PE, others prefer PP, but in general, there are more people who prefer PE.
Polyester
Polyester fishing net is softer than polyethylene and polypropylene, so some client use it in the application where they need protect the fish.
It could be used as some parts of trawling net or as the inner layer of the trawling, where it can protect the fish from the damage by the nets, such as cod-end.
It is usually produced as polyester multifilament net or polyester braided net, which will be sewed piece by piece with other fishing nets and ropes.
It is soft enough, and it has higher strength than polyethylene and polypropylene. so polyester is also very popular in the trawling net.
Some other clients also usually use it in the seine nets. The polyester knotless net is usually sewed together in different mesh size.
The only problem is that, because of the resistance to water, polyester net will float on the surface of the water without sink.
So you should calculate the suitable weight of leads or ceramic weights to help the seine net could be sinked fast during fishing.
Another popular application is the aquaculture. The polyester knotless net is also one of the main products to be used as fish cage nets.
It is soft enough to reduce the hurt to the fish. it can reduce the death rate of the fish in the farming, this is very important in aquaculture.
Polyamide
Polyamide is also called nylon, it is very popular in the high quality fishing nets. It is widely used in many kinds of fishing nets, such as seine net, trawling net, gill net, ghost nets and fish cage.
The nylon knotless net is very popular in seine net because of its goods water absorption, it can help the fishing nets sink very fast than other materials. Meanwhile, it is very soft, so it is the best choice for seine net.
Another special application for nylon is gill net. The gill net is produced by nylon monofilament net or nylon multifilament monofilament net. If you want to buy some gill net, the only material for you to choose is nylon.
Similar with the polyester, nylon also could be used as fish cage net. Compared to polyester, nylon is more popular in the aquaculture becase of its water absorption, it don’t need extra leads for them. it can reduce the extra cost of the leads and installation.
Same as polyester, nylon also could be used as parts of trawling net, the nylon multifilament net, nylon braided net, nylon knotless net are all widely used in the trawing net. You can choose one of them if you have the plan in the trawling nets.
UHMWPE
As a new material of modern nets, UHMWPE has the best properties of all the plastic. The weight of fishing net would be much lighter than others materials.
Even the price of UHMWPE fishing net is higher than other fishing net, but it also can reduce the cost in fishing, such as the fuel consumption.
One of the popular application is trawling net. Compared to other fishing nets, in the same strength, the weight of UHMWPE net could be about 20%. So it could increase the speed of trawling in fishing and reduce the fuel consumption. The comprehensive usage cost can be reduced by about 50%.
One other main application is fish cage nets. The single layered UHMWPE knotless net is strong enough to protect the fish from predators in the water. It has proven to be resistant to various predators such as barracudas, puffer fish, pompano, sea turtles, sharks and other marine animals.
With this net, fish farming is safe until harvest, even if the net is installed in areas with high predator populations.
If you choose the UHMWPE as the fish cage nets, it is better that the horizontal and vertical lines are also UHNWPE.
Even the unit price of material is the highest, but he total weight of the whole fish cage net is much lighter than other material, so the total cost might be similar with other materials. So more and more clients choose the UHMWPE as the material of their fishing equipment in the deep sea projects.
How to choose the material
if you read the blog here, I am sure that you are familiar with the difference of the materials. But you might not know how to choose the material.
Now I will give you some suggestions as your different situations
Fishing by Hand Netting
if you just have a small boat, or even don’t have any boat. You just want to buy some very light nets to catch fish by yourself in the river, pool, lake or sea.
I think the nylon monofilament net is your best choice. you could choose the nylon monofilament net and install with floats and leads by yourself, you also could buy the completed net, such as gill nets or cast nets.
It is suitable for you to catch small fishes and large fishes.
Because the gill nets and cast nets is very small and light, it is the most popular fishing equipment in the market. You could buy them from everywhere, such as fishing net store, supermarket, Amazon and other online store.
But before that, you should learn the polycy of your local government. The nylon monofilament net or some mesh sizes nets might be baned in some countries.
If you have one or more boats, another choice for you is seine net. You could choose the small seine net, the materials could be nylon or polyester, the size could not be too large, so that it could be used by hand. It is usually used in river, pool, lake and offshore.
Commercial Fishing Nets
If you are a commercial fishermen, or a seafood company with a fleet of fishing vessels. The fishing gear would be large fishing net: seine net and trawling net.
If your targeted fishes are tuna, markerel, salmon, anchovy or sardine, the best choice for you is the purse seine. Most of the seine net is made of nylon knotless net, some others also could choose polyester knotless net.
If you targeted fish is the fishes in the pelagic waters, or even on the sea bottom. Another choice for you is the trawling net, such as midwater trawling and bottom trawling net.
The materials you could choose for trawling net are HDPE, Polyester, nylon and UHMWPE. Most of clients choose the HDPE braided nets, it is cheap and has high strength, high abrasion resistance. You also could choose some nylon or polyester multifilament net to be used as some part of the trawling nets.
Another choice is UHMWPE, more and more clients prefer to choose it to make the trawling net. it has higher strength and lighter weight. It is suitable for fishermen who have only low horsepower fishing boats.
Aquaculture
If you have some fish cages in the lake or river, I think HDPE knotless net is very suitable for you. Most of the small fish cage nets are made of HDPE. If you don’t have enough budget, and the situation of farming is not so terrible, I think the PE knotless net will be your best choice.
If your fish cages are located in the deep sea, PE might not be so strong enough. You should choose nylon, polyester or UHMWPE.
If there are many predator in the water, the best proposal for you is 2 layered nylon or polyester net, the inner nets could be knotless net, the outer nets could be braided net, multifilament net or knotless net.
If you choose UHMWPE knotless net as fish cage net, one layered net is strong enough. The strength is 4-5 times that of nylon or polyester.
End of the blog
There are too many factors need to be considered before choosing. The properties, applications, price, using cost and the local preferences in your market.
If you want to do business in fishing nets, I think it is useful for you to collect the information of the nets in your markets.
After that, you could have a talk with your suppliers about what you want. Hope this blog is useful for you, and have a great success in the nearly future.
