194 . Trawling on the Solway. 



channels and sand banks with swiftly running tides, so that the 

 boats and gear of the Lancashire fishermen were suitable for 

 work in the head waters of the firth. 



Owing to the natural conditions it is impossible to use large 

 boats for trawling in the Solway, at anyrate till one gets to the 

 westward of Heston Island. Small boats mean small nets, and 

 to this condition of things we probably owe the continued abun- 

 dance of flat fish in the firth. At anyrate it is a fact that while 

 many producti\-e fishing grounds have been ruined by excessive 

 trawling, the Solway to-day is as well stocked with flat fish as 

 ever or nearly .so. It is true that soles are getting scarcer every 

 year, but these fish do not breed in the firth, and the reduction 

 in their numbers is caused by excessive trawling in deep water. 

 Flounders and plaice do breed in the firth, and at certain seasons 

 the smacks take from ten to forty stones of them in a tide, and 

 this has been going on for seventy years without any appreciable 

 diminution in their numbers. While the swift tides and danger- 

 ous sand banks are much abused by navigators in heavy cargo- 

 carrying craft, the fishermen have cause to be thankful for these 

 conditions. It would, perhaps, be rather far-fetched to say that 

 the bottom of the sea requires cultivating in order that it may 

 form a healthy and productive fishing ground, but something 

 very like the cultivation of the land does actually take place in 

 the Solway, and to this fact we owe the continued excellence of 

 the fishing. It may be said of those flat fish which frequent our 

 shallow waters that a continual shifting, changing, and upturning 

 of the bottom is almost if not quite as important as the same pro- 

 cess laboriously carried out on the land is to the crops. Fortu- 

 nately, gigantic natural forces accomplish this important work in 

 the Solway, i)ut it is interesting to note that this submarine 

 ploughing is rendered more efi^ective than it otherwise would be by 

 the dragging of the trawls. These may be likened to the harrow- 

 which completes the work done by the plough on the land. It is 

 hardly necessary to point out that the ploughing of this huge area 

 of sea bottom is accomplished by the tides. Only those who 

 know the banks and channels of the firth can have any idea of the 

 ceaseless change W'hich is taking place. To say that frequently 

 hundreds of acres of sand are shifted in a few hours conveys only 

 a very inadequate idea of the gigantic scale on which Nature is at 

 work in the Solway. How, it may be asked, does this benefit the 



