of the Fishery Board for Scotland, 



255 



APPENDIX F.— No. XIX. 



THE SOL WAY FISHING. By Peter Wilson, Fishery Officer, Girvan. 



The methods of fishing and the description of fish caught are limited to 

 that estuary. The readers of ' Red Gauntlet ' will be familiar with the dark 

 rows of stake-nets, the long muddy fore-shores, and the flounder-nets of 

 the coast fishermen, worked by the ebb and flow of the tide, and though 

 there is no longer the swift horseman plashing through the pools and 

 spearing the salmon, the external aspects of matters is not greatly changed. 

 There is the solitary fisherman, with stick in hand and wicker basket across 

 his back, plodding to his nets by night or by day as their dark tops be- 

 come visible by the swift receding tide, and doing as his fathers did half 

 a century ago. The principal sea fish caught on the estuary of the Sol way 

 are flounders, shrimps, and cockles. Mussels seed very freely, but the 

 shifting sand banks speedily destroy them, and hence the mussel banks 

 serve chiefly as a feeding bed for flounders. The shrimp fishing is the 

 most extensive and valuable in Scotland. From the town of Annan 

 about forty small vessels of about 4 tons each and cutter rigged are 

 engaged in the shrimp fishing in its season. They work with a small 

 meshed trawl-net, and are manned by two men in each. The tide is 

 everything in the Solway, and there it is hopeless to strive against the 

 stream. Quloosing their moorings at the water foot, Annan, with the 

 first of the ebb tide, the net is cast, and the little vessel may be seen 

 driving along the channel^ and outwards to a distance of eight or ten 

 miles. The returning tide brings them back over the same ground, and 

 when off the village of Powfoot, about three miles from Annan, a thin 

 cloud of steam may be seen rising from the vessel. This indicates that 

 the net has been finally drawn. The shrimps are put alive into a pot of 

 boiling water and cooked, a liberal supply of salt being used in the pro- 

 cess. Shrimps are largely supplied to beer shops in most of the large 

 towns in England, but are not extensively used in Scotland. The 

 catch of shrimps at Annan in 1885 was over 2000 cwts., valued 

 at £6000. The same vessels also engage in the flounder fishing, for which 

 a beam trawl, with a wider meshed net is used. In the months of 

 January and February the fishermen take to cockle fishing, and about 

 1200 cwts. have in the present season been landed, valued at £250. 

 The shore fishermen work a kind of small stake-net, with covered 

 pockets, chambers or paidles placed in the angles of the arms, which 

 are only open to the out-going tide, the flounders which may have 

 gone on to the banks to feed dropping into the pockets with the 

 ebb. This method of fishing has been long in use in the Solway, and has 

 been the cause of much contention and expensive litigation between the 

 proprietors of the salmon fisheries and the shore fishermen. The draw- 

 net, as a more successful method, is now coming into use, and about the 

 shoal banks of the Solway is likely to become a more profitable method, 

 and will in time supersede the small stake-nets which have for many 

 years been set on the edge of the low-water mark. From its fast-flowing 

 tide, and the drainage of so many rivers and streams falling into the 

 Solway, it will always remain a rich breeding place for fish, especially flat 

 fish, and such as prefer the hard food found upon its scars. 



