Eureka, California fisherman and innovator Ken Bates strives to build the perfect lampara net. Into his 70s now, Ken Bates has seen decades of fishing on the coast of northern California. He spent 35 winters gillnetting row herring in Humboldt Bay and fished for sardines and anchovies with lampara net, but markets change and tastes change. “We lost the freezer for sardines here. Now we use a lampara net to fish for live anchovies for the albacore bait boats,” says Bates. “And we build the nets.” Bates company, Cloudburst Fishing primarily supplies equipment used in the bait fishery for albacore tuna, including the lampara nets used to catch the bait.

Like purse seines and ring nets, lampara nets are used to circle schooling species of fish or squid. Unlike purse seines lampara nets, which use a single vessel to set the net in a circle around a school of fish, Much like Danish seining, or fly shooting, the captain and crew first set one wing-end on a buoy and start a wide circle as they pay out that wing, then they set the bunt, or bag as it’s often called. Then, the next wing circled back to the end of the first wing, and both wings are hauled simultaneously.

“Some guys will use a lazy line on the first wing and start hauling it as they set the second wing, so they come together when they finish the set,” says Bates. “The important thing is to keep it as circular as possible. If there’s any current at all, even a quarter knot, you have to have the bag up current.”

Being off bottom, a lampara depends on fish staying up in the water column. “The fish don’t know the rules,” says Bates. “Sometimes they go under. We do best fishing at dawn, that’s when they’re bunched up near the surface.” The advantages of lampara nets over purse seines are their simplicity and the ability to use them in areas where the bottom might tear up a seine. “Also, with live anchovies, they’re better because you don’t scale the fish,” Bates says. “A purse seine is more efficient, but when you purse the lead line, it creates a lot of folds, and the anchovies get stuck in there, and it can roll them around and scale them, and then they’re no good."

There are several methods for hauling back lampara bait nets, Bates notes. “The first and most labor-intensive is by hand with a crew of four,” he says.  Hydraulics are easier, and Bates designed a two-sheave hydraulic net hauler based on a 12-inch diameter Puretic netblock.

“These small net power blocks were widely used in Alaska for hauling the leadlines on salmon purse seines back into the seine skiff. We doubled the sheaves and designed a fabricated arm to hold the hauler and attached it to a 3-inch diameter pipe stand, either deck or bait tank mounted.”

On his own boat, the 32-foot Ironic, Bates and his wife Linda use a single 12-inch power block and a net reel to haul the net. This allows them to unwind the wing on the net reel to prepare for another set.

“We’re set up to build two styles of Lampara Nets,” says Bates. “The first is a San Diego style net, characterized by a light 6-inch mesh wing web using #6 twine. We assemble it in panels and combine it with a large band of 2-inch stretch measure throat webbing attached to a relatively small bunt or sack.” Bates hangs the wing web so that 100 percent of the hauling force is taken on the cork line.  “These design features restrict the fishing depth during both setting and hauling,” says Bates. “Also, the 6” wing mesh is subject to damage from drop-through corks or lead lines during setting. The advantage to these nets is a smaller web pile.”

The lampara net Bates prefers to build uses what he calls Petersen-style wings. “These lampara net wings were developed by John Peterson,” says Bates. “I learned how to build them from him.”

According to Bates, the Petersen wings have a 30-mesh deep cork line selvage strip of 1.5-inch meshes using #12 thread, and the cork line is hung slightly slack above the selvage strip. One or more horizontal strips of 4-inch mesh of #9 thread make up the wing body. Along the bottom of the wing, Bates adds a lead line selvage strip of 12, 2-inch meshes made of #12 thread and, finally, a 95-pound Sampson lead core lead line.

“The advantage of this net is that the hauling force is transmitted through the cork line selvage strip which allows the corks to clear the fairlead pins without damage,” says Bates. “The tensioned selvage strip carries the haul back force so that the wing body remains at fishing depth throughout the haul back procedure.”

Bates points out that the Peterson-style wings are connected directly to the bunt web without a band of throat webbing. Instead, each wing terminates at the bunt with the addition of what he calls a “wing throat wedge,” made of the same material. “This wedge, 100 meshes deep on the bunt intersection, helps close the wing mesh at the very end of the set,” he says. “Typically, bunt web on these nets is 7/16-inch mesh using #3 thread knotless.” Bates taper cuts the panels and joins them to form a hemispherical bunt. “These nets tend to be slightly bulkier but are more durable and easier for an inexperienced crew to stack,” he says. 

These days Bates and his wife build one or two nets a year. “It’s part of our winter work,” he says. “Most are using them to fish live anchovies for the albacore boats,” he says, noting the disappearance of the local market for sardines.

Steve Moore, who runs a 55-foot albacore bait boat, the Rose Mar, out of Coos Bay, Oregon, won’t use anything but a Kenny Bates lampara net. “We love them,” Moore says. “They work. And the way he builds them, with 40-fathom wings, they’re simple to use. Another guy and I can stack it easily and make another set if we miss the fish.” 

Moore points out that fishing for bait with one of Bates’s lampara nets is fast work. “It takes about 5 minutes to set,” he says. “Another 15 or 20 to haul it, and if we get fish, another ½ hour to get them into the tank and wells.” Moore uses a double-sheave hauler made from old tire rims. With the bunt hauled alongside, he brails the anchovies into the wells. “My boat can hold 180 scoops,” he says, referring to the 15-inch diameter scoop nets that Bates sells through Cloudburst Fishing.

Moore prefers the Ken Bates’s nets over any other. “There was a time when for some reason, I didn’t have one of Kenny’s nets, so I borrowed one. We were an hour trying to stack that thing until some guy from down south saw us and came and helped us.”

Another time, Moore tore up his Bates lampara net, took it to the late Sara Skamser in Newport, Oregon, and asked her to repair it. “She repaired it, I can still see the spot on the wing, but she said if anyone ever asked her to build one, she wouldn’t do it, she’d send them to Kenny.”

Lampara nets are nothing new, but Ken and Linda Bates build theirs based on a design that is effective and easy to work, and it has garnered a loyal following.