Helen Johnson met Bob Marsden, Last of the Whitby Drift Netters
Bob Marsden and his boats
Netting for salmon and sea trout has taken place along the north east coast for generations. Drifts nets are recorded as far back as the 1840s, while the anchored T and J nets appeared later.
The salmon and trout are caught in late spring and summer, when they assemble off the coast to feed, before heading into rivers to breed.
In recent decades, though, the number of licences issued to the sea net fishery has declined steeply, in order to protect river stocks. This is because the Environment Agency believes river angling to have greater social and economic value than the sea net fishery.
Therefore, Bob Marsden, a Whitby netsman, may be among the last of his kind.
Whitby is both workplace and tourist resort
It was late spring when I visited Bob, and Whitby was seething with traffic, shoppers, builders, fishermen, harbour workers, tourists, buskers, and seagulls. Driving into Whitby clearly demonstrated that this town was never meant to be accessed from the land: its links to the outside world are by the sea. And as Bob spoke, I could hear the legacy of Viking seafarers who came here and settled, as his voice dwelled on words describing the sea: swell; jowl; squall.
He lovingly pointed out the features of his boats: high prow, low stern, and shoulders to breast the swell: sturdy, clinker-built cobles, used by generations of fishermen on the Yorkshire coast.
Bob is one of only a few licensed net salmon fishermen left in Whitby. Drift netting, he explains, “Is self-explanatory: the net drifts in the tide.” TJ nets, which he later switched to, are anchored at the bottom.
Drift nets use floats and weights to hang the net in the sea, and if he puts it in the right place, it will catch him salmon and sea trout. He shoots the nets from a small rowing boat, and says, “You have to police the nets because of seals. Seals are plentiful, and if nets catch the salmon, it saves the seals a lot of work – they leave you just the head!”
Bitten-off heads enable Bob to see what he’s lost to the seals, and he says that once, he lost £350 – worth of fish.
Most of his fish goes to Whitby Fish Market to be auctioned, but he also supplies local restaurants directly, with fish caught only hours ago.
For those of us brought up in the Welfare State, it’s a shock to hear how Bob started to fish. He says, “My Father was killed by a U-boat attack in the Atlantic – he was in the Merchant Navy during the War. Therefore, I had to support the family.” Bob was only twelve years old, but he had five sisters, and an unwell Mother. The other fishermen took him under their wing and taught him to fish. Bob doesn’t know what he’d have done without their help, and is thankful that they gave him the skills that have supported his family ever since.
He was keen to learn, as fishermen earn only by selling their fish. He recalls a bonanza one day: working in a crew of four, they had two hours of unusually good fishing. He was paid a ‘White Fiver’, and, he says, “I’d never even seen one before. You had to sign it to spend it – you had to take it to the Post Office to prove you owned it.”
He adds, “There weren’t many fivers earned in Whitby.”
The salmon and sea trout season is short. Salmon can be caught only in June, July and August; the sea trout season starts a little sooner. So when not fishing for salmon, Bob catches other fish. As a boy, he collected winkles, and says, “For generations, we’ve done lobsters in spring, salmon in summer, and long line fishing for white fish, mainly cod, in winter. That way, everything gets a rest and time to breed, while you’re fishing for something else.”
Read more about Bob in Dalesman, www.dalesman.co.uk