1>To the rocks I must go..



To the rocks I must go...
The sea is my living,
Though a cold wind does blow,
-Sometimes I don't know
How we keep on surviving;
The sea's like a cow,
Can't always be giving.

[the winkle song]

My first living thirty years ago was picking winkles. It meant that I was tied to the tide, so my mistress was the Moon.
Once you have picked winkles ANYTHING seems easier: the worst bit was keeping your body-heat up in the winter, and your attention from straying to catching prawns in the summer. It was an exercise in patient application.

It was also an attempt to do sufficient to 'pay for the day', not taking too much.

I started to fish a small wooden boat as well, launching off the beach, setting some lobster pots. I rowed out for two seasons, until I felt justified in buying an outboard.
Launching and coming in were potentially hazardous. Timing was critical, as a small boat that has shipped water is as gainly as a bath-tub, and can soon suffer damage on the stones. A lesson was to avoid actual high tide, as there is often a shelf of shingle to hump the boat over.

The next ten years saw me up my fishing effort to where I was setting about 150 pots, from a fibreglass 15 foot boat. I was always short of bait, so set gill nets to catch dogfish. These I 'pickled' in a digusting liquor of accumulated fish juices in a bait-bin.
Lobsters are 'gourmets', preferring stinking bait. If you use fresh bait, you are likely to catch crabs, and picking dozens of small ones off the meshes of your pots soon tests patience.

Once lobstering is in your blood, you're done for.



There is always a reason to go out the next day. If you did badly, you must move the pots to better ground, if you did well, you must reap the rewards while the lobsters are crawling.

The sense of responsibility in being the dad of four kids eventually made me feel I had to concentrate my attention on my other source of a living, that was picking moss etc for florists for a more reliable income, so I gave up fishing.
It was also getting boring. I called it "fishing by numbers", which meant you had to set a large amount of gear just to be sure of a viable catch.
Also the catch permutations were limited> nothing/undersized lobster(s)/undersized crab(s)/size lobster/crab, with a few prawns and fiddlers crabs (green shore crabs if I'd set the pots in too close). There were occasional surprises, like a big dogfish, conger, spidercrab, or octopus, but not enough to feel the sea a prolific and bountiful place.

I got to feel that I was participating in the ruination of the sea.

I had to keep away from the sea, particularly in the summer, when it smelled of seaweed and fish, for two seasons, but eventually bought two sit-in kayaks, on the assumption that they would be impossible to fish from, so I wouldn't be tempted back into old ways.

Some chance!
A big factor was moving from Llanrhystud, in Ceredigion, to North Pembrokeshire. From a shallow, rather muddy sea, with few bays etc, to deeper, clearer waters with hidden coves.
I started keeping my canoes on a local beach and venturing out. There didn't seem the same industrial scale to the fishing effort here, but more smaller craft with less pots. I made and set a lobster pot. I make small, light pots, based on plastic bread tray bases, so it was just about OK to haul it, though what I'd have done if it had wedged under a rock, heaven knows. I eventually caught a legal sized female lobster. I had no other means to carry her, but to put her between my legs while I paddled for the beach!

My hunting genes were fired into life.
I was a born-again fisherman.




To the rocks I must go,
The sea is my living.
The sun it shines now,
The beach it is shimmering.
The seals wallow,
The cormorants diving,
The gulls make a row
-The mackerel are coming.


[the winkle song]