A fishing weir, or fish weir, is an obstruction placed in tidal waters or wholly or partially across a river, which is designed to hinder the passage of fish. Traditionally they were built from wood or stones. They can be used to trap fish. For example, salmon and other fish can be trapped when they attempt to swim upstream, or eels can be trapped when they attempt to migrate downstream.
Alternatively, fish weirs can be used to redirect fish elsewhere, such as to a fish ladder.
As fish traps, fishing weirs date back to the Bronze Age in Sweden and to Roman times in the UK. They were used by native North Americans and early settlers to catch fish for trade and to feed their communities.
Famous quotes containing the words fishing and/or weir:
“It is long ere we discover how rich we are. Our history, we are sure, is quite tame: we have nothing to write, nothing to infer. But our wiser years still run back to the despised recollections of childhood, and always we are fishing up some wonderful article out of that pond; until, by and by, we begin to suspect that the biography of the one foolish person we know is, in reality, nothing less than the miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal History.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The first thing to be done by a biographer in estimating character is to examine the stubs of his victim’s cheque-books.”
—Silas Weir Mitchell (1829–1914)