NATURE AND SPORT IN BRITAIN 



are adepts, and you may see them picking out prawn 

 after prawn from their nets, sometimes getting two or 

 three at a hoist, and adding steadily to the bag. Others 

 are less accustomed, or have less luck, and their take is 

 proportionately smaller. Luck is, as with all fishing, 

 an element that has to be reckoned with. Still, the 

 skilled prawner, who knows the likelier bits of coastline 

 and understands his or her art and I know some 

 extremely skilful lady prawners may usually reckon, 

 on a fair day and with a decent tide, to make a capital 

 basket. With too smooth a sea and clear water, sport 

 is, of course, poor ; the prawns see and find out too 

 much. A fresh tide and water well discoloured by sand 

 are infinitely to be preferred. 



One youngster of our party, armed with a long 

 spoon-net, is wading up to his mid-thighs in all the 

 deeper gullies, shovelling and dibbling gently under- 

 neath the rich brown beard of seaweed that fringes all 

 the rocks. His bag is usually the best, as indeed it 

 deserves to be, for the work is much harder and in- 

 finitely wetter. Once during the morning he has an 

 adventure with a conger eel, which he finds left by the 

 tide in a long and deepish pool. For twenty minutes 

 the slippery fish evades his efforts ; boy and eel scour 

 madly fifty times up and down the sandy floor of the 

 long gully. At last perseverance has its reward, and 

 the youngster hoicks out quite a fair-sized conger on to 

 a spit of sand, and succeeds in capturing it. Five and a 

 quarter pounds it weighs some hours later. That eel, 

 by the way, formed the chief component parts of a most 

 excellent pie, the recipe for which may, perchance, 

 interest the reader. Here it is : 



Skin and wash two pounds of eel ; cut into pieces 

 two inches long, and line the bottom of the pie-dish 

 with force-meat. Put in the eel and sprinkle it with 



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