336 ANCHOVIES IN THE ENGLISH CHANNEL. 



In consequence of Mr. Dunnes information I inquired on Decem- 

 ber 17tli of the pilcliard-fisliers at Plymouth if they ever caught 

 anchovies^ and they answered that they frequently caught a few 

 specimens, but always threw them away. They promised in future 

 to bring me all they caught. About the same time I borrowed a 

 sprat drift-net and arranged to have it shot by our own men from 

 our own boat, both inside and outside the Sound, thinking that a 

 sprat-net, having a smaller mesh, might catch more anchovies than 

 the pilchard-net. 



As the result of my application to the Plymouth pilchard-fishers 

 a number of anchovies taken in pilchard-nets in the neighbourhood 

 of the Eddy stone were brought to me in December, 1889, and 

 January, 1890. These were brought in lots of from one to six 

 specimens at a time. But I caught no anchovies in my sprat-net, 

 from which it may be inferred that anchovies occur off Plymouth at 

 some distance from land, about the Eddystone, but not in the inshore 

 waters either inside the Sound or immediately outside it. The 

 nearest places from which I got specimens were the south side of 

 the Mewstone and a mile or so south of Penlee Point. 



It was thus evident that although anchovies might possibly in the 

 future be caught by suitable nets in marketable quantities off Plymouth 

 and Mevagissey, that at the time they were actually landed in market- 

 able quantities only at Torquay. I wrote to Mr. Whitehead at the 

 beginning of January asking him to get me 5000 anchovies and send 

 them to me at Plymouth, where I arranged with an Italian fish-curer 

 to have them cured. But, unfortunately, fishing operations were en- 

 tirely suspended during nearly the whole of the month of January 

 by continuous stormy weather. On January 29th, when moderate 

 weather at last set in, I went to Torquay to procure if possible a 

 considerable quantity of anchovies. I found there that sprats were 

 not taken with drift-nets as at Dover and Deal, but in large seines 

 worked by means of several boats, one of them, into which the net 

 is drawn, being a large barge-like boat moored in shallow water. 

 The purse of a seine of this kind consists of very small meshes, so 

 that it is impossible that any anchovies escape through the net ; the 

 net is as well adapted for catching anchovies as for catching sprats, 

 and the two kinds of fish are caught in the net together. I saw 

 one of these seines worked, and about a dozen bushels of sprats were 

 taken in it, but among them were very few anchovies ; I picked out 

 about a dozen, but the total number was too small to make it worth 

 while to sort the two kinds completely. I was told by the fishermen 

 that in the past season as many as thirty bushels of anchovies had 

 been caught at one haul of the seine. 



On January 15th I had a letter from a gentleman at Sidmouth 



