If you do a bit of recreational fishing from your own boat have you ever thought of adding a few shellfish pots to your armoury of fishing tackle? Between May and September, the season for recreational shell fishing, there's nothing quite so satisfying after a day out in your boat with the rods, to go home via your string of lobster pots and haul them to add a couple of nice lobsters or crabs to your catch for the day. This article explains the basic elements of recreational shell fishing and how to get started.

But first things first - the law. Shell fishing is strictly regulated by district sea fisheries committees each of which may have different byelaws for unlicensed shell fishing. Therefore, if this article does fire up your enthusiasm for a bit of recreational shell fishing, it is essential that you contact your district sea fisheries committee, (they're in the phone book), and get them to send you their book of shell fishing byelaws for your district. By way of example, Cornwall Sea Fisheries Committee allows unlicensed boats to land two shellfish from within the species lobster, (Homarus gammarus), crawfish, (Polinarus elephas), brown crab (Cancer pagarus) and spider crab, (Maja squinado) in any one day. These must be of the regulation size, which is also given in the byelaws booklet, and it is forbidden for unlicensed fishermen to sell their catch. It is also forbidden knowingly to land female lobsters, more of which later.

The basics

My district sea fisheries committee does not place a limit on the number of pots an unlicensed boat may use, but yours may so check your byelaws book.  So I may work as many pots as I like as long as I adhere to my unlicensed landing limit, explained above.  However, with a landing limit of 2 shellfish per day it makes no sense to use more than half a dozen pots which is what I have in 3 sets of 2.  The basic and I suggest minimum setup will comprise two lobster pots connected together with a minimum of 60 feet of floating rope, and from one of these pots a minimum of 60 ft of leaded rope to the surface where it is attached firstly to floats, or washballs as they're called, and then to a floating flag more usually called a dahn. The pot nearest the dahn is attached to the main rope via a short length of rope, usually about 3 feet long. The pots themselves are fitted with a strop on which there is a double eyed connector to which the main rope is attached. The basic recreational potting setup would therefore look something like this:

The rope lengths are important because you will be fishing in quite shallow water and probably hauling by hand, so you will not want the weight of both pots in your hands at the same time when you are hauling them up. This means that you want one pot on the boat while the other is still on the sea bed and this determines the length of rope between the pots, so adjust this length for your particular fishing ground, (although some sea fisheries committees may specify the inter-pot rope length so check your byelaws book). It is useful to make the rope between the pots a 'floating' rope in case the dahn should get detached. In this case you will not know exactly where your pots are but with a floating rope between them, which will form a big floating loop between the pots on the sea bed, you will be able to tow a grapple round the approximate area and nearly always pick up the loop of rope on your pots to rescue them. The rope from the washball on the surface to the first pot on the sea bed must be leaded though, or it will float and present a hazard to other boats.

The pots

Lobster pots, or creels, come in two basic forms; inkwells and parlours. Inkwell pots are, well, just like inkwells, circular at the bottom narrowing to a single opening at the top of the pot. Avoid these because they tend to be heavy and they need to be visited every couple of days or the shellfish may escape. Parlour pots, on the other hand, have a separate compartment into which the shellfish go after entering the pot and from which they cannot escape, so parlour pots may be left for longer periods without the worry that the shellfish will escape. The one opposite is old and battered, but it still fishes well and has a season or two in it yet. In fact I have left my parlour pots for up to two weeks and hauled them to find lobsters alive a well in them. Buy new pots if you want, but they are expensive. Better to get your pots second hand from your nearest fishing port, the local paper or the Internet. You will usually find that commercial shellfishermen have a number of pots which are no longer up to the mauling they get from commercial use, but which with a bit of TLC will serve the recreational potter for several more seasons. Expect to pay about £10 to £12 for a second hand pot which has all the metal work in one piece but just needs the door and netting repairing. Some second hand pots may have some metalwork damage, but as long as this is minor it can be repaired using plastic water pipe tied into place with cable ties where the metalwork has failed.

The rope

I've already explained the rope lengths involved, and for the floating rope a fairly cheap 10mm nylon rope will do. 10mm leaded rope can be expensive, but you can weight it yourself if you can get hold of some old lead flashing from somewhere, preferably not the church roof!! Cut the lead flashing into 1 inch x 6 inch strips and wind these round the rope at 2 foot intervals, threading it through the weave of the rope to secure it. This works fine. The leader rope from the dahn, through the washballs to the main rope, or backing rope as it's called, can be 8mm floating.

The dahn and washball.

If you're wondering what the washballs are for, by the way, hang on I'll tell you later. The dahns are easily made up at home and comprise a 2.8 metre bamboo stick from your garden centre, choose the stoutest one you can find, a float of some description, an empty plastic lemonade bottle cut in half and a packet of ready-mixed post cement from your DIY store - and no, this is not Blue Peter !!! The float can be a piece of dense expanded polystyrene, a couple of plastic beach footballs wrapped in a bit of fishing net, a rigid plastic net float of the kind you see lying around your average fishing port, or anything that floats as long as it's sturdy. These are put together as shown. The flag material can be anything you want, but bear in mind that it's going to get hammered out at sea in all winds and weathers so make it tough. One of those thick plastic farm feed bags makes a couple of good dahn flags; attach it with cable ties. The weight is made by putting the thick end of the bamboo stick into the half plastic lemonade bottle, filling this with the ready-mixed post cement and then pouring half a cup of water over it and leaving it to set overnight. Put the two footballs into the fishing net and secure this halfway down the bamboo pole. Attach the 8mm leader rope to the dahn as shown and then slide on the first of two washballs which can be any floating device, but you can buy proper wash balls quite cheaply at chandlers and I do think these are best. Secure the first washball approximately 15 feet from the dahn. Thread a second washball onto the leader rope and secure this approximately 10 feet from the first washball. Then securely attach the leader rope to the 10mm main backing rope. I have several dahns made up like this which have been in use for 4 seasons, and have only required the flags to be replaced each season.

Baiting the pots

Parlour pots are baited by trapping a fish inside a bait band which is wrapped round the throat of the pot. Any fish bait will do, but oily smelly fish is best and salted fish is the ultimate. So if you have a few mackerel, gurnard, dog fish or the like in your fish box from the day's fishing sacrifice a couple to the lobster pots. Half a mackerel cut lengthways per pot will do nicely. Alternatively, my local fishmonger is happy to give me fresh carcasses from the filleting room for making fish stock, which I certainly use them for, but the heads of these carcasses are excellent pot bait too!

The ultimate pot bait, however, is salted mackerel, and I salt my own mackerel down every winter by two different methods, namely, brining and dry salting;  this is what to do.  In both cases, towards the end of the season buy a couple of 25 kilo bags of salt from the fishmonger; it's as cheap as chips, and you can top up your salt pots with it! Then, for the brining method, get hold of a large rigid plastic container which has a tight fitting lid, a dustbin will do at a pinch, and put it as far away from the house as you can. Then, every time you go out in your boat be sure to have a mackerel bashing session. Catch as many as you can, gut them thoroughly and wash out as much blood as possible, which is best done on the boat in a perforated fish basket. When you get home place the mackerel in a garden sack, add about a third of their weight of salt to the sack and shake them around until they are thoroughly coated. Then tip them into the container, add four or five more handsfull of salt on top of them, fit the lid tightly and leave them alone. Carry on doing this throughout the autumn and winter, adding mackerel to the container all the time. The mackerel will soon 'brine'. That is, the salt will draw all the liquid out of the fish to form a brine in which they end up floating. Then, come the next summer's potting season, I just transfer this bait to the boat and keep it in a smaller bin, above.

For the dry salting method do exactly the same as for the brining method but drill a load of holes in the container so that the brine can leak away.  This is best not done at home but somewhere like a local farmer's field, with their permission of course, where the smell of the draining brine will not cause complaints.  Once dry salted mackerel are 'shot through' with salt they will last a very long time; the ones on my boat on the right are two years old.

The smell of salted mackerel is not to everyone's liking, though it's by no means unpleasant, but it sure as heck catches lobsters like no other bait can, and it's the only bait commercial lobster fishermen use.  Actually, salted mackerel is a very good hook bait too.

Choosing your fishing ground and 'Shooting' your pots away

Ok, so you've got your pots, made up your dahns and attached everything as shown above. So now bait your pots and organise them on the boat. When the pots go out for the first time every year I do all this on the boat before setting off. Once the pots go out they stay out and you'll be hauling, baiting and shooting away again at sea without bringing the pots back. Put the dahn against the side of the boat with the leader rope and washballs close by it. Place the last pot on the deck and coil the main backing rope in front of it in a fairly neat coil. When you come to the second pot, the one nearest the dahn, put this on the deck next to the end pot and carry on coiling the rope on the same pile as before until it leads off to the washballs.

So now it's time to go to sea and 'shoot' your pots away, but word of caution first.  Avoid the lobster grounds that commercial fishermen are using.  This is for two main reasons, firstly, it is their living and they will take very unkindly to a recreational potter going onto their traditional grounds and dropping strings of two pots all over it, and secondly, if you do do this you are likely to drop your pots over theirs and so-called 'shoot them down'. The commercial fisherman's answer to this will simply be to cut your pots away and leave them on the bottom, and frankly you couldn't blame them.  Commercial grounds will most often be identified by a whole forrest of dahns occupying a large area of the sea, so if you see this go somewhere else. 

So find you own ground now by making a course roughly parallel to the shore well away from any commercial ground and in water which is not going to be deeper than the length of your rope from the dahn to the first pot at high water. Lets say this is going to be 40 to 50 feet, and don't forget this is 40 to 50 feet AT HIGH WATER and not necessarily at the time you shoot the pots. If you shoot your pots away in 50 ft of water on a low tide and there's a 20 foot tide, your dahn is going to go under and you won't find them if you go to haul them on a high tide!! How far this depth takes you off shore is going to depend entirely on your particular bit of coast, of course, but in my case it's between a quarter and half a mile off. Now look at your echo sounder and seek out rough ground. When you find it, put the boat on the slowest speed you've got and set the steering if you can to give the boat a gentle course TOWARDS the side you are going to shoot the pots from. This ensures that the main backing rope is always going away from the stern of the boat. If you can't set the boat's steering then use the 'paddle wheel' effect of your boat, that is, note which way it tends to turn when you let go of the steering, and shoot the pots from the same side. So if your paddle wheel effect takes the boat to port shoot from the port side, if it's to starboard shoot the pots from the starboard side.

Toss the LAST pot over the side first, that is, the one FURTHEST from the dahn. Then with the backing rope slipping through your palm, let the backing rope pay out until it gets to the next pot, and tip this one over the side. You can then let the rest of the backing pay out slowly, or you can do what I do and pick up the whole of the remaining coil of backing rope and chuck it as far away from the boat as you can. Then pick up the dahn and washballs, chuck the washballs over the side and hold the dahn until the backing rope pulls tight. Hold the dahn for a little longer just to pull the whole string tight then drop the dahn in, and off you go fishing.

Hauling your pots

Right your pots have been out there for a while now, a week for parlour pots is not too long, and it's time to go and haul them, but let's not pretend this is a nice clean, elegant operation. It's not! The dahn, leader rope, washballs and the first 20 or so yards of main backing are going to be covered in brown, slimy, slippery algae and a whole load of it is going go all over you and your boat. So if you're boat proud and polish your gunwales every day you had better forget recreational potting. Put some protection over the gunwale where you intend to haul the pots, mine is a four inch diameter plastic pipe cut in half just dropped over the gunwale, and over yourself, the most popular of which is a waterproof bib and brace. Approach your dahn slowly and look for the washballs. This will tell you which way the leader rope is streaming away from the dahn and you need to come up on the dahn on the side opposite from the washballs. As you come slowly up on the dahn with the dahn just to the side of your bow, knock the boat out of gear and go and grab it. It may help to have positioned your boat hook in the boat where you are going to haul the pots from. Put the dahn on the opposite side of the boat from the one you're hauling from, gently pull in the leader rope until you get to the backing rope, and then haul away. As the first pot comes up put it on the deck and haul in the rest of the backing to the last pot and put that on the deck. Now inspect your pots, take out all those lovely lobsters and crabs and measure them to see if you can keep them. Re-bait the pots and put them back in the same spot, if it's been successful, or find another spot for them if it hasn't. As an aside, if you don't want to haul by hand look out for a little electric pot hauler; I certainly wouldn't be without mine!

Regulation sizes

It makes no sense whatsoever to keep undersized shellfish. Not only is it illegal it's also stupid because there's not enough meat on an undersized lobster or crab to feed the cat and most importantly they are the future of the stock. Make yourself a measuring stick. Mine is made out of a simple flat piece of plastic with notches cut in it for the sizes of lobster, hen crab and cock crab and I just hold the appropriate gauge against the shell fish to see if it's smaller or bigger. The lobster is measured from the back of the eye socket the back of the carapace, (head), and crabs across the body. You must check with your own district sea fisheries committee to find out what the regulation sizes are for your district and cut your gauge accordingly, but for Cornwall the lobster measurement must be greater than 90 mm, a cock crab 160 mm and a hen crab 150 mm. I have already mentioned that female lobsters may not be landed. The trouble is that it's difficult to tell a female lobster from a male, so the rule is this: if a lobster is caught which has eggs attached to its belly, a so-called 'berried' lobster because the eggs look like berries, it is obviously a female and may not be landed. A small 'V' shaped notch must be cut into one of its five tail 'feathers' which will forever mark that lobster as a female, even after she has shed her eggs. Fishmongers and fish markets are forbidden from buying 'V' notched lobsters or any that do not have a full compliment of in-tact tail feathers. Although recreational potters will not be selling their lobsters it makes no sense to take home a female lobster. If you get caught you would be hung drawn and quartered, and rightly so, because again that is the future of the stock. So just drop the 'V' notched or berried females gently back into the sea in the same spot that you caught them along with the undersized catch and those beyond your unlicensed allowance, and just take home those two 3 pounders for the pot - yum yum.

Cooking the catch

OK, this is a contentious issue and I could avoid it by saying nothing, but that wouldn't be right, so here goes. There are two ways to cook lobsters. You can boil them, take the cooked tail and claw meat out and use it in a dish of some description, or you can kill the creature and cook it either under the grill, on the barbecue or as in some Far Eastern dishes cut the raw tail into chunks, crack the raw claws and cook them in the wok with the other ingredients., and I've used all these methods, (with the last two, barbecue and wok, being my favourites).

Right then, boiling: no one wants to boil a conscious creature, and I certainly don't. The trouble is that once a shellfish of any description dies, it deteriorates very very rapidly, so if I intend to boil the lobster this is what I do. When I have taken the lobster(s) out of the pots I put them in a bin on the boat and cover them by about one inch in sea water. Within about 30 to 40 minutes the lobsters are unconscious because they have used all the oxygen in the water.  I time this so that when I get them home they are totally limp, lifeless and unresponsive to handling.  I then plunge them into boiling salted water. The creatures offer no reaction whatsoever and I leave them there for 8 minutes per pound weight.

If I intend to barbecue, grill or 'wok' them I just plunge a cook's knife straight down through the white cross on top of their heads, which is a nerve centre, and death is absolutely instantaneous.  In any event, however you kill the lobsters, my advice from hard-earned experience of cooking them is to avoid ghastly pink cheese sauces with fancy names and just keep it as simple as possible !!!

Conclusion

All this may seem more trouble than it's worth, but believe me it's not. Once you've got your basic set up it's a doddle and recreational potting for shellfish is not only great fun, but will bring a whole new dimension to your family's diet, to say nothing of your weekend barbecues. I honestly don't think there is a better, more wholesome, healthy or tastier meal than a lobster cooked on the barbecue with a few knobs of butter, a squeeze of lemon juice and eaten straight out of the shell accompanied by a glass of your favourite chilled white wine.

Bon appetite...........................