INDUSTRIES 



number of fish. A laudable attempt is being 

 made to deal with the difficulty, but at 

 present, it is to be feared, without any very 

 satisfactory results. 



A word as to the watching of the river 

 may not be out of place. In 1870 the Eden 

 Fishery Board was formed, having jurisdiction 

 over the greater part of the Eden and its 

 tributaries, together with the English side of 

 the Solway Firth. It is composed of ex- 

 officio members, appointed by the County 

 Councils of Cumberland and Westmorland, 

 and members elected by the licence holders in 

 the common waters of the Solway. This 

 Board, which has a revenue from licences 

 reaching in good seasons almost to 1,000, 

 employs a staff of bailiffs and an inspector who 

 look after the district. The number of 

 bailiffs varies slightly according to the money 

 at the Board's disposal, but usually consists of 

 ten permanent men with additional help in 

 the spawning season. These men are sta- 

 tioned at various points ranging from Port 

 Carlisle to Kirkby Stephen. It will be seen 

 that some of them have a large extent of 

 water to watch. The most difficult portion 

 of the river is naturally that in the neighbour- 

 hood of Carlisle, where there has been always 

 a certain number of poachers who work in 

 gangs and are very difficult to deal with. 

 About 100 years ago an association of fishing 

 proprietors was formed for the purpose of pro- 

 tecting the fisheries, watchers were employed, 

 and no doubt a certain amount of useful work 

 was done ; but for some reason or other the 

 association was broken up, and from that date 

 till 1870 any watching that was done was the 

 result of private enterprise. At that time the 

 worst and most destructive form of poaching 

 was the taking of fish from the spawning beds 

 by means of spears and torches, or as it was 

 called ' blazing or burning the water.' The 

 spawning beds above Wetheral at Brocklewath 

 and Holm Wrangle were favourite places for 

 this form of diversion, and it was usual for the 

 proprietors of the lower reaches to proceed in 

 a body to these haunts during the spawning 

 season and lie in wait for the poachers. 

 Many a desperate fight was the result till, on 

 one occasion about the year 1861, a watcher, 

 who was employed by some of the lower pro- 

 prietors, was killed during an encounter with 

 poachers at Brocklewath. The assailants 

 were identified and two of them were sen- 

 tenced to long terms of penal servitude. 

 This appears to have sounded the death knell 

 of organized poaching. Shortly afterwards 

 the Fishery Board was formed, and now the 

 risk of detection is so great that few care to 

 take the chance of it. 



It has been mentioned that there were cer- 

 tain reasons which might partly account for 

 the scarcity of salmon fifty years ago. At 

 that time and up to the year 1861, when a 

 new Act was passed prohibiting the killing of 

 herling, or as they are locally called ' whiting,' 

 it was the usual practice to kill large numbers 

 of these fish in the nets, and although there is 

 still some difference of opinion as to their 

 species, there can be little doubt that they are 

 the young of salmon, and that their destruc- 

 tion in large numbers was bound to have a 

 prejudicial effect on the salmon fisheries. It 

 may also seem strange that as late as 1861 it 

 was lawful after March 1 5 to kill salmon with 

 the spear or ' leister,' after which time it was 

 supposed that the majority of the fish had all 

 finished their reproductive work and descended 

 to the sea to recuperate, and that not much 

 harm could be done. Such, of course, was 

 the method of fishing in the days of ' Red 

 Gauntlet.' 



Nor can we say that this is the only re- 

 miniscence of those days in face of the 

 grievances that still exist between the fisher- 

 men on the English and those on the Scot- 

 tish shores of the Solway. At the present 

 time the Englishman has decidedly the worst 

 of it. The Act of 1861 declared that fixed 

 engines were illegal, thus at one stroke 

 abolishing all the stake nets on the English 

 side of the Solway. On the Scottish side 

 however the proprietors, taking advantage of 

 an old statute which was passed at a time 

 when the two countries were engaged in 

 hostilities, and which exempted the waters of 

 Solway from the prohibition against the use 

 of fixed engines, established their claim to 

 their stake nets, and thus were enabled to 

 retain a method of fishing which was de- 

 clared illegal and was discontinued on the 

 English side. This is held by the English 

 fishermen to be a great injustice. In addi- 

 tion to this, as the weekly close time on the 

 English side extends to forty-two hours, while 

 that on the Scottish side is six hours shorter, 

 the English fishermen have the mortification 

 of seeing their rivals fishing on the other side 

 of the channel while they are compelled to 

 stand idly by. Moreover, the fishermen on 

 the Scottish shore may use a net whose mesh 

 measures 7 inches, while the Englishmen's 

 mesh must measure not less than 8 inches 

 except for two months of the year. Thus it 

 will be seen that the Englishmen have very 

 good reason to complain of the laws govern- 

 ing the fisheries of the two countries. Several 

 recommendations have been made by Royal 

 Commissions and other bodies that the Sol- 

 way should be placed under one law, and 



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