Ringing 



After a while they meet. Yes, just Hke that. They bang into one 

 another - and that's one of the reasons you can't go ringing in a 

 big sea. You'd need more than a few old car tyres to keep them 

 from smashing the guts out of each other if there was the kind of 

 weather you usually get about these parts in the season. Even with 

 a little swell on a dark night it can be damned uncomfortable. 



'Once they're snuggling side by side, the ring is complete and, 

 if you're going to catch any fish, then they must be somewhere 

 within that ring. That's why I always think that ringing is the best 

 form of fishing to test a man's brains. In trawling or seining you 

 just trail away at the bottom and hope for the best. In drifting you 

 let the fleet slip out and, again, you hope for the best. The best 

 fisherman is apt to become the most hopeful one. But in ringing, 

 it's different. There, you find out where the fish are and then you 

 surround them. You've even got to creep up on them, careful 

 that they don't hear the sound of your engines - which is another 

 reason why the echo-sounder's too blunt an instrument to ring 

 with.' 



'I always used to think of the trawl as a kind of dunce,' said Jan. 

 *You know the sort of thing, with a big pointed cap on his head 

 and without enough sense to make a mistake. These ring nets, I 

 suppose, would be a kind of clever schoolboy in comparison, top 

 of the class, and so on.' 



'Aye, but if we must go back to school,' Ian was growling, 

 'then the drift net would be the master. It doesn't need to go 

 messing about on the bottom o' the sea or running about in circles. 

 It's able to sit it out, and in the worst weather too, sedate like, 

 on the surface, and it looks down at aa' these other nets that have 

 still to grow up.' 



'Oh well, if you like it that way, I don't mind.' George was 

 far too deeply involved in his subject to be bothered with such 

 interruptions. 'But you see what I mean, Johnny. You've got 

 these two boats close athwart one another and probably shuggling 

 the very devil through every timber they've got in the pair of them, 

 and the net's over the side, its five bowls dancing in one of those 



2oi 



