BREYDON IN LEISURELY AUTUMN 181 



on their favourite subject the good old days. Poor old 

 fellows ! perhaps they have fallen on evil times. I know for 

 a fact that " Snicker " and his " pals " for two whole days in 

 November, 1906, captured twenty-nine smelts ! His conten- 

 tion was that so many steamers [luggers] fishing in and out 

 of the harbour drove them away ! 



" What luck, Larn ? " I asked. 



" Middlin' ! " said he. 



" What's the biggest haul and largest prices you've known 

 smelts taken and fetch ? " 



" The biggest haul was that 'ere job of Ribbons's seventy 

 score ; x in the middle of May, two yeer ago [1905], I remem- 

 ber five and ninepence a score bein' cleared after all rail- 

 fears and Billin'sgate dues was paid, and comin' home. 

 That wor a top figger : two shillin's a score is more nearer 

 the mark. It's allers the way in cums the fish and down 

 goes the markets, ain't it, * Short 'un ' ? " 



" What's that ? " said little " Short 'un," who had not caught 

 the remark. 



" Good tea!" said Larn, for Jary had left the kettle on the 

 hob since noontime. A handful of tea popped in the kettle 

 is the usual dose, and an every other day's emptying of the 

 accumulated refuse is the custom. 



In between sips Larn volunteered the facts that smelt-nets 

 average seventy-five yards in length, and are ten feet deep, 

 costing complete about five pounds. 



" When I was a kid of nine, workin' with my father, the 

 channel was so shallow, and the rise and fall wasn't more 'an 

 four feet, we useter stake smelt-nets athort, three on 'em 

 perhaps bein' put in a few hundred yards apart. The smelts 

 useter to gill themselves, and we got twenty and thirty score 

 a day, sometimes, with very little trouble. We useter 

 watch the wherries comin' up and down, and lower 'em till 

 they went by. Tides, 'bor ? Why, at the bar theer was so 

 little water at low tide that you could hardly shove a shrimp 

 boat over. 



" Smelts hang about here most of the year, but you know, 

 in course, they go up-river to spawn in the spring. I've seen 

 'em here in August jumpin' at the herrin'-syle like a pike at 

 a roach." 



1 Vide Nature in Eastern Norfolk, pp. 93-4. A week's catch realised ^"14. 



