Living Silver 



which the ring net was divided, two wings at each extremity, two 

 shoulders, and, in the centre, a single vertical panel called the bag. 

 The corked head-rope and the unbuoyed foot-rope were also simi- 

 lar to the scheme of a drifter's gear but, below the foot-rope, 

 there was another rope, the spring-rope, that corresponded to 

 nothing in the drifterman's vocabulary. Then, too, the lint of a 

 drifter's fleet was all of the same mesh-size whereas the ring boats 

 used nets, or panels of netting, that varied widely in mesh-size. 



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RING NET 



The wings and shoulders were wide meshed and could never have 

 held a herring that tried to pass through them. But they were not 

 the catching part of the gear. They acted like the ropes of a 

 Danish Seine or the sweeps of a trawl, shepherding the shoal into 

 the area of no escape. In the ring net, that area was the central 

 panel, the bag, just as in the trawl it was the cod-end. 



By the time George got back from the bar, both hands frothing 

 with two pints each, he was even more talkative than before. 

 'But, of course, they don't call it a ring net for nothing. You 

 don't fish with it hanging down limp like you do with a drift net. 

 You shoot it in an arc, after you've dropped your winkie to mark 

 the place. And you go with the tide to begin with and then veer 

 round to run across and against it ; for, even when you're ringing, 

 the herring still head the tide. So, when you've got it all out, 

 each boat picks up one end and they come towards one another. 



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