Silver Darlings

[sam-cox]

SILVER DARLINGS

 

This is a brief insight into a typical winters day herring drifting, as fished by many commercial fishermen past and present on the Thames Estuary.

 

The herring arrive in the Thames Estuary in October and the shoals build in size with making tides.

 

I left school at seventeen and went to work crewing on a commercial fishing boat; this was to be the start of my first season’s herring drifting.

That winter was extremely cold, it was 1991 as I remember and it was so cold that Bradwell marina had a layer of ice on its surface at least an inch thick.

 

The boat was a heavily built Freeward 35 named Islay Mist; she is a lovely safe strong sea boat.

 

Low water was at 6 am, so to arrive at the Southwest Reach just before low water we needed to leave the marina at 03.00.

My alarm is a distant bleeping right in the back of my sub conscious.

My skipper Nick had spent an hour to drive the 10 miles to my house through the snow, he had to dig himself out of two snow drifts on the way and wasn’t happy that I had over slept.

 

We arrived at the marina just in time; if we had been just twenty minutes later the boat would not of got out the creek.

 

The mood is solemn, and not helped by the gas being frozen and our first cup of tea denied us. My first job is to move the large gas bottle to the engine room to thaw out. Second job is to tip buckets of seawater over the deck this also involves having to clear the scuppers with your hands allowing the slush to escape.

 

Its now 04.00 and the gas has thawed, the kettle is on and the wheelhouse is now warming up as are our spirits.

 

At nighttime for some reason the color echo sounder shows a yellow haze from the seabed to the surface, this haze clears as it gets light, we often pondered on this fanon amen. We guessed it was plankton that dispersed with the on set of daylight.

 

It’s now time to check the gear; herring nets are nylon (not mono) sinking gill nets that are set to fish at a chosen depth by the use of adjustable strops.

These strops are basically lengths of rope with a plastic floating buff at one end; these are attached to the net at about 3m intervals. They hold the net at the desired depth; knots are tied in the strops to adjust the depth fished. The nets are fished in fleets made up of six nets; each fleet has a marker dan each end.

 

That day we shot four fleets of six nets just before dawn. Herring drifting is very biblical, one cast thou nets.

We finish out tea and its time to see if we have enough herrings, we do this by checking one end, sometimes there are so many that the buffs that hold the net up begin to sink.

There are enough in the end of the fleet we check so we decide to start hauling.

Islaymist has a conveyor hauler so it is physically quite easy, but bloody cold when you first start.

The first shimmer of herring comes to the hauler, they are so pretty, an iridesent silvery pink color.

We haul all four fleets and the autopilot is set for home. Now its time to start shaking the nets out.

The nets are hauled onto the deck so are in a big heap of net and herring, a scaffold pole is placed across the boats gang tree and the net pulled and stretch across it. This lets us shake all the herring out of the nets and flake the net into their pens ready for the next trip.

We just finish shaking out as we enter Bradwell Marina, now we need to box the fish up and as its only half flood we need to push the boxes of herring up the ramp. This is the last bit of hard work before Im dropped off home.

 

We used to average around 150 stone of herring per day, of which a third was mine, the price then was the same as now around £3 per stone.

Thames Estuary herrings never fetch much as they compete on the market with Norwegian herring that are much larger and cheaper and I think Norways fisherman were subsidized.

All in all I enjoyed my time as a herring drifter working two hard winters, the market and the fish are now gone really although the are still some fisherman targeting herring on the Thames Estuary.

Edited December 14, 2005 by sam-cox

[sam-cox]

I think its worth mentioning that herring nets are nylon gill nets, and that most of the herrings we use for thorn back fishing bait are caught this way. Not all gill nets are bad.

[Tony U]

Nice post Sam, I enjoyed reading that well done.

Tony

[A Norfolk Boy]

£3 a stone .......... Get smoking and pickling! (will be diluting with sugar/ water next time).

 

Reckon you must have spent ages getting the scales off everything.

[five bellies]

A interesting post sam,

 

I remember that winter of 91, froze my conkers off working in an old barn in canterbury. one morning whilst carrying a scafold pole on my shoulder it froze to the skin on my neck not nice.

[sam-cox]

OUCH!

[Slashley]

Nice one Sam. I remember fishing the Blackwater that year. Brrrggghhh!!!! Have yer been down the Crouch lately? Been concentrating on Suffolk fer cod so won't get down there possibly till Spring for the bassing etc................

[sam-cox]

no mate, went out on me mates boat last weekend, went 18 miles out 4 codling 1 7lb cod 1 15lb cod one 5lb roker. havnt fished the crouch for a while.

[Sharkbyte]

Nice little write up there mate, a pleasure to read.

 

Keep em coming, how about one for last weekends successes, gps coordinates would be good?

[sam-cox]

Thanks mate, The skipper I used to work for stopped herring drifting about 6 years ago due to bad market and hard fishing.The trouble is now where to get our thornback bait from.

I might get some nets myself but will have to check if I need a local lisence even if I only want them for myself and for bait.