Measurements at sea during fishing trials on bottom trawl, have revealed that the geometry of the trawl is affected by the catch. A series of 27 hauls of around 3h have been carried out during the EFFICHALUT project. This project aimed to find out improvements on the fishing gear in order to reduce the energy consumption. For this project numerous sensors have been used, for bridles tension, doors spread, vertical opening, doors attitude. The measurements show quite clearly that the doors spread decreases and the bridles tension increases along most of the hauls. The doors spread decreases by 1.35m per hour, with a standard deviation of 1.98m/h when the top bridle tension increases of 47kg/h, with a standard deviation of 59kg/h. The mean catch per haul is around 1.48ton. The modelling of the trawl gear and the catch with a FEM allows to explain the variation of the doors spread and the bridle tension: The model explains a mean decrease of 0.77m/h for the door spread and a mean increase of 55Kg/h for the top bridle tension.