How lobster pots are made
Lobster pots are made out of mild steel and are then finished in a plastic coating to protect the steel from the salt water for as long as possible it also absorbs part of the shock on impact of hitting the ground(rocky sea bed).There is a lot of work in making a lobster pot you have to shape the steel to form 3 hoops for the frame and then weld them to the bottom of the pot which in itself is made up of many straight pieces of steel welded into a rectangular shape.Then support pieces are welded onto the sides of the hoops just above of where the mouths will be on either side.The whole process takes a few hours and is by no means easy work. Nowdays fishermen buy there pots off people who make pots for a living. In olden times many fishermen made their own lobster pots.
Heres how a finished lobster pot frame should look:
The next part of the process is putting on the netting.The net can be bought from a supplier or chandlery .I put on the net using braided twine also supplied by the same place I got the netting from.I stretch the net over the frame and cut off the net that is protruding over the length and width of the pot.I the tie the netting on to the pot by means of two half hitch knots.These are particularly strong and rarely loosen.The netting is put on tight but not too tight because if the mesh is too rigid on the pot the lobsters sharp claw will cut through the mesh more easily.
Heres how the knot should look on the pot
When the pot is covered it should look like this:
The next part of making the lobster pot is putting in the mouths in the pot.There is two soft-eye mouths in a lobster pot and they are situated on oposite sides to each other where neither mouth is directly beside or across from the other mouth.
The mouth works like this ;
The mouth is a very effective means of catching lobsters because when they are in the pot they are trapped.There is one mouth on opposite sides of the pot.The lobsters go into the pot through the mouth after the bait.The bait usually consists of mackerel or herring.The bait is placed in a mesh bag called a bait bag.This is situated between both of the mouths just in the middle of the pot.It can be cleaned and baited from the outside
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