A Scottish skipper has praised the performance of Morgère’s PV3 trawl doors for their stability and consistent spread they provide of the net opening – even when the vessel is engaged in a tight turn.

Skipper Alan Addison of the 29m fishing vessel, Venture (BF 326), has always been a strong advocate of Morgère trawl doors having fished with them on both his current boat and previous vessels for almost 20 years. But he says he has been particularly impressed with the latest model PV3 door.

“I have found them to be excellent,” he says. “They are very steady, even when the vessel is turning sharply, and the spread offered is consistently good.

“As soon as the doors hit the water when shooting our gear they immediately open the net right up. The doors really seem to get a grip of the water. Normally we fish twin rig, but we’ve found that no alterations are required to the door set-up when switching to single rig trawling – they immediately work just as well.”

The Venture lands mainly into Kinlochbervie in north-west of Scotland and in recent months the vessel has been working six to seven day trips catching a mixture of haddock, cod, saithe and monkfish. The vessel has just completed three back-to-back fishing trips with a total catch of around 160 tonnes of prime fish. The Venture also sometimes works deepwater grounds and here too the PV3 door has been performing well.

Skipper Addison said: “We found previously that when we got down to the last 100 fathoms of wire that we tended to lose the electronic Scanmar signal for several minutes before it reappeared again once the trawl had settled. However, with thePV3 door there are no dead zones or blank spaces and we get a consistent signal all the way down, which is obviously very useful when looking to optimise the trawl performance.”

The PV3 was launched onto the market in 2010 and one of its key features is the three grouped louvers on the front of the door, which greatly increases the lift whilst as the same time reducing drag.