With the same strength grades, polyamide (PA) monofilament netting suffers less resistance than polyethylene (PE) twist wire netting in water, so some parts of PE twist wire trawl can be replaced by PA monofilament material in order to reduce resistance and save energy. In this paper, a shrimp trawl was selected, based on which a PE twist wire model trawl and a structure-modified PA monofilament model trawl were designed following Tauti model experiment standard and their performance and energy saving property were researched and compared by flume experiment. The experiment results showed that under same testing conditions, the properties of modified PA monofilament model trawl were better than PE twist wire model trawl. At the same speed, when the L/S ratios of the two model trawls were 0.40, 0.50 and 0.60, compared with the PE twist wire model trawl, the resistance of modified PA monofilament model trawl decreased by 12.14%, 8.11%, and 6.00%, net opening height raised by 20.00%, 22.09% and 25.64%, vertical expand coefficient increased by 28.57%, 27.27% and 30%, and the energy consumption coefficient decreased by 18.34%, 24.81% and 26.23%, respectively. The research shows that high-strength PA monofilament trawl could reduce resistance suffered by fishing gears and improve their performances, and can be extended and applied in fishery practices.