THE CATCHING OF LOBSTERS 



to his boat. For small-crab fishing less care is needed ; 

 the pots are let down in a series, left for some hours and 

 then pulled up again, and the catches thus made are 

 sometimes enormous; I have seen as many small crabs 

 in one pot as would fill a peck measure. By small crabs 

 I mean such as just come within legal limit, for the law 

 is very sharp nowadays on the crabbers ; no fish that 

 measures less than four and a quarter inches in length 

 may be taken ; fishermen are also forbidden to take 

 spawners, and crabs whose shell has not hardened ; for 

 these fish assume a new shell every year just as the 

 lobsters do. 



I spoke of crabs as bait. Whelks and crabs "se 

 mangent entre eux " ; there are few things the one likes so 

 much as a taste of the other ; but the odds are in favour 

 of the crab, for it is only when his shell is soft, or after he 

 is dead, that the whelk gets a fair chance at him. The 

 fisherman comes along and, like the stork that settled the 

 dispute between the frog and the mouse by eating the 

 pair of them, catches the crabs and then uses them as 

 bait to catch the whelks. This method of whelking by 

 means of lines is the one least commonly known, and we 

 must leave the consideration of pots to glance at it. 



Whelk-lines, generally termed " trots " or " bulters " 

 (not to be confused with the "bulters" mentioned in 

 Chapter IV), are great favourites with the Thames-mouth 

 fishermen. Each main line has short lines (called 

 " snoods ") tied at right angles to it, at intervals of a few 

 yards, and every short line has twenty tiny crabs fastened 

 to it, each about six inches apart from the other. This 



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