trawl

verb

• fish with a trawl net or seine:the boats trawled for flounder (as noun trawling)restrictions on excessive trawling were urgently needed
• [with object] catch with a trawl net.
• sift through as part of a search:they trawled through twenty-five-year-old confidential files [with object]:he trawled his memory and remembered locking the door
• [with object] drag or trail (something) through water or other liquid:she trawled a toe to test the temperature

noun

• 1an act of fishing with a trawl net:they had caught two trout on the lazy trawl
• an act of sifting through something as part of a search:we did a trawl of supermarkets and health-food stores a constant trawl for information

• 2 (also trawl net) a large wide-mouthed fishing net dragged by a vessel along the bottom or in the midwater of the sea or a lake.

• 3 (also trawl line)another term for longline.