Breaking the law.

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In the seventies so much herring was being caught thanks to new methods of fishing (mainly pair trawling and purse seine netting) with modern instruments in the wheelhouses that showed the skippers where the spots of herring were, how deep they were and gave images of their nets capturing the spot leaving no escape route for the fish.
This was a boom time in all methods of fishing with great prices being paid by foreign buyers coming from Europe and Russia, with Russian factory ships lying off the west coast for weeks salting and curing herring until they were full, then head back to Russia while another would take it's place.
Mackerel too were heavily fished in this way but never reached the same high prices as the herring.

So much fish was being caught that the powers that be decided to close the North sea to herring fishing for five years and the west coast for three.

This meant that even the seine netters like the "Wanderer" (the boat I worked on at the time) would have to dump any of that species if we happened to catch them.

Sometimes it was hard to escape spots of herring when fishing for white fish especially as the herring were not being fished for by the herring fleet, allowing them to multiply rapidly, which was the reason for closing the fishing in the first place, although there was no immediate signs of any scarcity of them.

During the time when the herring came into the Firth of Clyde to spawn all the fishing fleet from prawn trawlers to seine netters like us, could catch anything from ten to fifty boxes a day and were supposed to dump them back into the sea where, once being towed inside our nets for hours had no chance of survival, so instead of throwing them back to feed the seagulls and gannets we would land them on the quiet out of sight of the fishery officers who prowled the harbours during landing times.

One day we hauled our net to find it full of good sized herring, about eighty boxes in all, a good haul at the best of times, but the thought of throwing all that fish away at the cost of around a thousand pounds was too much to even consider so we kept it aboard and I boxes it in the forward part of the hold to try and conceal it.

We steamed away from them for an hour and shot our gear again hoping to catch white fish this time, but once again it came up with a good haul of Herring, so once again I boxed them forward in the hold and hid them behind empty boxes and some full boxes of white fish that had been caught earlier on in the trip.

We had a good catch of white fish aboard before the herring started interfering with our trip so with the hold almost full, albeit mostly with illegal fish we steamed for the harbour to land.

Sure enough the fishery officer was on the prowl, and much to our dismay jumped aboard our boat as soon as we were tied to the quay and asked to see what was in the hold.
Confident enough that the herring were concealed we opened the hatches and as I looked down onto the floor of the hold from the deck, all I could see running down, thick and white the length of the hold was milk (sperm) that was seeping from the male herring, a dead giveaway.

The fishery officer never mentioned it and climbed down the ladder behind me when I entered the hold in preparation to land.
As he looked aft where the bulk of the white fish were stacked, his back to the hidden herring, he remarked on the good catch we had and was pleased that no herring were among them, chatted for a short while then climbed back out again, and went ashore quite happy.
I scratched my head in amazement wondering how he never spotted the milk on the hold floor, or even asked to see the fish in the forward hold, and I still wonder to this day why we were not nabbed.
We landed the herring at night, straight on to a lorry when all was quiet, or supposed to be quiet anyway as ten to twelve boats were all waiting to do the same thing.
The buyers would purchase our fish and send lorries down at night when the fishery officers were off duty, load them up and whisk them away to their factories where they were prepared for their outlets the next day.
The herring were sold at a cheaper price than would have been had they been sold in the markets and bid for, but the rewards were greater for us, as all the money from our contraband was split evenly among the crew, tax free.
"Stoker" we called it, which was managed in some way every week but never in such abundance.

The fishery officers eventually became wise to our game and would patrol the harbour at night, making it more difficult for us, but we always found a way around it by landing at harbours that had no markets but enough room for a lorry to come alongside the quay where we lay and load our catches that way.

In recent years, boats who tried to flaunt the quota laws have been caught and given heavy fines, lucky to walk away with their fishing licences intact, licences that never existed in the seventies but now every boat has to have one, and log every fish that is caught.

All the fun has gone out of the job, and the Klondike days are gone, the fish are getting scarcer, and who knows if it was the illegal fish landed or not, all I know is that I had fun when I was at sea regardless of all the rules.

The adventure is still there, the storms still have to be contended with, and the fish will recover, as the fleet has been cut drastically, I only hope that there will still be a Scottish fleet to enjoy the bonanza when they return, and the European Union has not damaged it enough that only foreign boats are left and allowed to plunder our waters, and clean them up the way they ruined their own.

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Freedom for a goldfish.

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One of the benefits of being a fisherman was the fact that you knew how fresh the fish you were eating was.
Another benefit was that you could take home any type of fish you wanted, and any amount within reason.
So it was, when we had parties at the house I used to take home herring, prawns, and other white fish which made our parties very popular, with such good fresh fish dishes to be had. The other ingredients that make a party go with a swing were there too, but it was the prawn cocktails,(REAL FRESH PRAWNS, not the cardboard shrimps that supermarkets, and most eateries fob us off with now) pickled herring with new potatoes and butter, and the other dishes that I remember, not only because they made great eating, but also because I had to do all the cleaning of them before my wife cooked them. (fantastic fish suppers too if requested)

My wife at the time had a sister with two young daughters, one aged five, the other three.

One day at the fair they won a goldfish, which took pride of place in their home, sitting in a bowl at the centre of the table, where the girls would spend many a happy time watching it swim round and around.

The oldest girl Lorna, one day decided that it should have a bit more room to swim about in, so she emptied the bowl down the toilet, flushed the pan and ran to tell her mum of her generous deed, thinking the fish would end up in the sea.

She could not understand why her mum began to shout at her, when she was told of this deed, and even after it was explained to her that the fish was lost never to be retrieved, she was still unrepentant.

"It's all right mum" she said, patting her mum's back in a comforting way. "Uncle Donald will catch it and bring it back to us, he's a good fisherman."

Her mum could only smile, and I can only think it was seeing some of the fish I brought home that sparked the idea off in her mind.

I did for one minute think about buying a goldfish from a pet shop to replace it and confirm my nieces faith in my abilities as a fisherman, but then it crossed my mind that this might become a regular occurrence, and could cost me a pretty penny at the end of the day so I decided to spin her a yarn. (Me being a mean Scotsman ha ha.)

I told her that it had been cooped up in the goldfish bowl for so long, without seeing its mum and dad, that as soon as it entered the sea it swam away to find them, and one day while fishing I spied them swimming side by side happy to be together again.
"DID YOU Uncle Donald?" She asked, eyes agog.

Yes I replied, and your wee fish asked me to thank Lorna for sending it back to its mum and dad, then it wriggled its tail and swam away to join all the other goldfish in the sea.

Her reply left me quite stunned and speechless when she said, "Well we will have to rescue more fish from the fair,so they can join all the other goldfish in the sea."

Now how do you get out of that?

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We are sailing again.

It might have been the fact that my happiest days at sea were on the Olive Tree, and that this short part of my life on the Girl Margaret, although holding some adventure, while bringing the modernization of the fishing that I desired within my grasp, was not the happy place I wanted to be, hence maybe the hesitancy of continuing with the blog, but with my readers support here goes.

The short periods of time I had at home were not the happiest either, and it was no hardship when I had to return to the sea, and leave my wife and son behind.
So many changes had been made in my life over the last couple of years as I was following my instincts to make a better life for myself, with not much thought of my family.
The sea was my life, and I was selfish when it came to the crunch, choosing the sea above all else.

The second last week at the herring aboard the Girl Margaret saw quotas coming in, meaning we were only allowed to land a certain amount of fish for each nights fishing, and if you were lucky enough to get your quota early in the night it meant you were back in port long before the market opened, where we would sell our catch to the highest bidder.

It happened to us on one such occasion, when we had our quota aboard before midnight, with so much herring that we passed some onto another pair of boats to help them, rather than throw the fish back into the sea dead.

We were only an hours steam from Tarbert, and by the time we moored up it was around 1am, so I thought I had a good nights sleep ahead of me until it came time to discharge our catch, but as usual the boat was spied coming in and two or three folk, even at that time of the morning had come down to see us.

The crew new the folk here as it is not all that far from their home port of Campbeltown, so true to form in these places, we were invited up to one of the men's house for a drink owing to the fact that the pubs were shut.

Only two of us accepted, me of course and another guy called Kenny, who enjoyed a dram even more than me.

When we entered the house I noticed it looked very plain, and it was clear that this man lived alone, (lacking a woman's touch was putting it mildly.)

A bottle of whiskey was produced from a cupboard, which between the three of us was downed rapidly during the conversation about the fishing, (what else) and on seeing the bottle was empty I stood up ready to head back.
No sooner was I on my feet when another half bottle appeared from under the seat cushion our host was sitting on, and when that was finished another was produced.

It was daylight when we set off back to the boat to land our catch very drunk but able to manage the work that lay ahead of us, and by the time the landing was over and the hold filled with boxes again the drink had almost worn off.

The cook had our dinner ready for us, and once it was scoffed, we had two hours sleep before setting off to try for our next nights quota, which did not come so easily this time.
Maybe it was punishment for the night before, but it took us all that night, into daylight hours, taking four tows, before we reached our quota.
No rest for the wicked, ran through my head as we finally set off for the market, with no intention of anymore drink that week.

Well my intentions were good at least.

There is no denying the hospitality of the people in these ports, which is second to none, but sometimes it is better to refuse, rather than be sociable type of person I am, or glutton for punishment as the case may be, because sleep is one thing you can never catch up on no matter what you may think.

After another poor nights fishing, and word of herring at the Isle of Man, another adventure loomed.........or so I thought.

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