Ringing 



you're closing the gap underneath the shoal and driving the little 

 fellows up towards you. But that's not all you're doing. As well 

 as the foot-rope you've got to worry about the bonny circle of 

 corks that's still lying athwart your boat. So you put a chap for- 

 ward and another aft, you've got two crews aboard, remember, 

 and they haul in your corks for you. So you're narrowing the ring 

 at the top as well as the bottom, driving the fish up, but driving 

 them in at the same time. This isn't purse net, you see. It doesn't 

 hold your money at the bottom, like a woman's handbag, but at 

 the top of that central panel I told you to call the bag. So you've 

 got to get all the rest of the net aboard, and then they will lie in 

 the bag as snug as you would in a hammock. And that, I suppose, 

 is about the size of it. You're catching your herring in a hammock. 



* While the head-rope comes in at stem and stern, most of the 

 lint's brought over the side by another couple of chaps who are 

 pulling up the wings : and then, square 'midship, you need an- 

 other two to raise the leaded foot-rope when it starts to break 

 surface in the wake of the spring-rope. That's why you need the 

 whole crew on the one boat. They've all got a job to do. To be- 

 gin with, hauling is easy, not even as hard as the first stretch with 

 a trawl. And sometimes it goes on being easy for a hell of a long 

 time, till you think you're not going to have a blighter in the bag. 

 But then, at last, when you've only got one buff out, the bag buff, 

 and it's floating about twenty yard off, you find that you're in for 

 a hard haul. But it only lasts for a few minutes till you've got the 

 last of that damned foot-rope aboard. And then you see them. 

 There's nothing like it in drifting, nothing like it in trawling. For 

 the first time in your life you'd really feel that you were fishing if 

 you could see them froth like the head of a jug of beer almost up 

 to the rail of your boat. It's more than that even, for the best beer 

 looks a bit dead compared to the frenzy of their frothing. You 

 see, it suddenly strikes you all over again, as though you had never 

 known it before, that the little fellows are alive and that they like 

 being alive. ' 



But the talk of beer had been meant as a hint. Ian was gathering 



203 



