CHAPTER XVI 

 PRAWNING 



Best season for sport — A summer pastime — Good baskets — Cycling an 

 aid to prawning- — A thousand-prawn bag — Good catches — Diana of 

 the shore — Costume — Difficulties of the rocks — Various species of 

 prawn — The English crustacean — -Modes of fishing — The gin-net 

 and pole — A day's sport — Fishing gear and cost — A long climb — 

 Birling Gap — At work — Adventure with a conger eel — Conger pie — 

 Hot lobster pie — A rare delicacy — The total catch — Homeward. 



SO far as the average amateur is concerned, the 

 excellent pastime of prawning begins with mid- 

 May and early June, and ends with the close of Sep- 

 tember. June and July are, perhaps, the best months, 

 but August is often almost equally as good. By 

 Michaelmas the fishermen will, except in an abnor- 

 mally mild autumn, such as 1902, think it high time 

 to put away his nets and turn his energies into other 

 channels. Prawning is, in fact, purely a warm weather 

 sport, to be appreciated in its highest perfection when 

 the midsummer sun shines overhead and seas are blue. 

 These delicious crustaceans have a distaste for chilly 

 waters, and prefer to come inshore, and are most 

 numerous when the sun blazes in its fullest strength 

 and the water has become thoroughly warmed. As 

 the cold of autumn returns they betake themselves to 

 deeper water again. The fisherman finds them then 

 steadily becoming less numerous, and, after all, trying 

 to lure the wily prawn, when the sea temperature has 

 gone below 55, when there is a cutting wind blowing, 



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