32 TEE INDUSTRIES OF SEETLAND. [Nov., 



pursued in the ' sixterns.' The number of baited hooks is eleven to 

 each ' bought,' and there are from nine to twenty boughts. 



The cost of an entire ' fleet ' is £17 10s., which seems a small sum 

 compared with the outlay on the fleets of other countries. The 

 Shetland fleet, however, is a formidable engine of destruction in its 

 way, and I have often seen the boats from the haaf unloading 35 cwt. 

 of fish each. ' Old Wick ' shows precisely how the catching is 

 manatred. The long line is sunk with stone, buoyed with corks, and 

 baited with herring, haddock, halibut, maclcerel, piltochs, conger, 

 tush, cod, and ling. We are told by another adept that herring is the 

 best of all bait when it can be procured, and is caught either in nets 

 or with the bare white hooks on dandy lines worked up and down 

 from a boat at rest, and so numerous are the fish sometimes that the 

 sinker (| lb. to 1 lb. lead) is stopped on the descent by the number 

 striking at the same moment, and six hundred have been got between 

 eight and ten o'clock in the evening. 



Haddocks are caught on small long lines of five boughts, with tea 

 score hooks laid in about twenty to sixty fathoms of water, and baited 

 with limpets, cockles, or razor fish or mussels. One of the old 

 country Acts ordained ' That none use mussels or other bait, but such 

 as all or the most part of the fishers- hath, under the pain of £10, 

 and that none fish with haddock lines within voes from Beltane to 

 Martinmas, or so long as they can draw haddocks on the hand lines, 

 and that none take bate nor cut tang in another man's ebb, under the 

 like pain of £10/ The banks or * grounds ' lie at all distances from 

 the coast, the principal one at the Feideland haaf being about forty 

 miles north-west from Feideland, though the boats are said sometimes 

 to go as far as sixty miles otf land, sinking Eoeness Hill, before the 

 line is completely set in 'the deep waters;' i.e., 80 to 120 fathoms. 

 Should the lines in foggy or misty weather get shot on certain ' long 

 lanes,' or channels of sandy bottom, the fish taken are rendered 

 worthless by the ^ga trideus, or ' bee,' as it is termed in North- 

 maven, a small crustacean which, getting in tlirough the gills in 

 large numbers, eats away the inside of ling, tusk, and cod, and leaves 

 the fishermen nothing but the skin and bone. Flat fish — such as 

 skate and halibut — it is compelled to leave untouched, as these fish 

 have the power of keeping their gill covers closed, which prevents 

 • the bee getting access to the interior of the fish. 



The six-oared boats make two trips a week to the far haaf when 

 the weather is good, starting from eight to ten in the morning on 

 Monday and returning on Wednesday, and making another trip 

 between Thursday and Saturday. The smaller boats going about 

 half the distance, from ten to thirty miles, lay and haul their lines 

 everyday. Ling, tusk, and cod are handed over to the eurer ; other 

 sortfj f^'-e retained for familv consumption. 



