EELTRAPNIGHT ONE
PURSE£340
NIGHT£0 / £110
STOCK100%
BOARDS DRYBOARDS 44 cm
TIDE RISING — POOL 21 cm
The pool is filling.
A FISHING WEIR · THREE NIGHTS
EELTRAP
A weir catches everything that goes over it. Set the boards, sink a pot in each gap, and lift them through the night. A small mesh takes the eels and the fry that should have gone to sea. A wide one takes the trout and the salmon you are not allowed to keep. You keep some and you put some back.
AD bay
WS mesh
Q pot
E lift
RF boards
SPACE run
No season on the books yet.
THE NIGHT WAITS
Boards down.
The tide, the pots and the boxes are exactly where you left them.
WEIR NOTES
The whole river, sorted by the width of a gap.
- THE WEIR
- Three bays, each a gap in the boards. A fish takes a bay when its girth is under the gap and the water is not running too fast for it. What goes through a bay with no pot in it is gone. What goes through a bay with a pot stops there.
- MESH
- 8 mm takes smolt, elvers and the smallest eels. 14 mm is the eel gap, and it is also the elver gap. 25 mm adds roach. 40 mm takes trout. 65 mm takes sea trout. 90 mm takes grilse, and a grilse is a fine.
- THE POT
- A pot holds seven. Full, the stop is plugged and everything after it squeezes past. A pot left standing dies what is inside it after about a minute and a half.
- THE BOARDS
- Water under twelve centimetres over the crest and the pool washes out. Between nought and twelve, whatever can leap goes over the top. Deep water is also deep water: the pots fish the tops, so a flood tide earns you nothing.
- THE RUN
- Downstream: smolt and silver eels. Upstream: elvers, grilse, sea trout and lamprey. Protected fish cost a fine and the goodwill with it. Smolt and elvers are worth nothing at the market and everything to the river.
Meet the nightly purse and the season is yours. Miss one and the buyer has heard about you. Take the fry and the stock of the river goes with it.
THE SEASON IS OVER
The pool is still worth fishing.
Three nights, the quota met and the stock still standing.