SOME FISH-NOTES FROM GREAT YARMOUTH. 13 



straight down — and quite fifty nets were lost with the fishes 

 they contained. A boat's " fleet " of nets consists of one hundred 

 and twenty sections, and reaches out, like a long-meshed wall, to 

 something like one and a half miles, and is about eight to nine 

 yards deep. 



On the 26th the same boat returned again with a catch of 

 30,000 Mackerel that realized £120. Clearing the nets of 

 Mackerel is a trying occupation for the fingers, almost every 

 fish having to be individually pulled out of the meshes. A few 

 days later another boat came in with eight lasts. 



Late in November a sea-angler, fishing from the beach, 

 hooked and landed a Mackerel, a by no means usual capture so 

 near the shore, and a rare enough circumstance from any 

 of the piers. 



Years ago, when a number of old brigs and kindred " sea- 

 waggons " served as colliers between Newcastle and Yarmouth, 

 it was a common practice to trail a line astern for the capture of 

 a few Mackerel. The hooks were encased in a small piece of 

 lead-paper, the silvery bait evidently deceiving the rash, eager- 

 biting Scombers. One ancient skipper, finding himself without 

 lead-paper, managed to push the barb of a hook through a hole 

 in a fourpenny-piece, and during the trip succeeded in bribing a 

 baker's dozen — thirteen — of Mackerel to their own destruction. 



Eeverting to nets " grounding," a veteran Mackerel-catcher 

 assures me that often meshed Herrings are more likely to swim 

 up with the net and "frap about at the surface," but Mackerel 

 " crook (die) at once, and their combined weight carries the net 

 downwards, providing they strike heavily." 



It would be out of place here to enlarge upon the purely 

 economic aspects of the great East Coast Herring Fishery ; the 

 following statistics, however, may be worthy of mention. Briefly, 

 about 800,000 crans of Herrings (800 million fishes !) had come 

 in by the end of November, 40,000 crans having been delivered 

 in one day alone (October 18th). Lowestoft had in the same 

 period added a catch about two-thirds as heavy as that arriving 

 in Yarmouth— 1,300,000 crans for the two ports, a prodigious 

 congregation of 1,300,000,000 fish ! The weight of the Yarmouth 

 catch may be set down at 155,000 tons, and for the two ports at 

 260,000 tons. Placing these catches upon the rail would have 



