"Not
exactly the kind of surroundings the fishermen seeks," you will say; but,
apparently, London fish get used to noise. Our boat was what I, speaking
unprofessionally, should call a small sea-boat, but I believe she was
built years ago at Strand-on-the-Green, the pretty old village with
maltings and poplar trees that fringes the river below Kew Bridge. She was
painted black and red, and furnished with a shelf, rimmed with an
inch-high moulding inboard and drained by holes, to catch the drip from
the net as it was hauled in. We were at work in two minutes. The net was
fastened at one end to two buoys; these dropped down with the ebb, and
formed a fixed, yet floating, point--if that is not a bull--from which the
boat was rowed in a circle while one of the brothers who own the boat
payed out the net. Thus we kept rowing in circles, alternately dropping
and hauling in the net, as we slipped down what was once the Bishop of
London's Fishery towards Fulham. There are still no flounders on the
famous Bishop's Muds, but other fish were in evidence at once. Though the
heat had made them go to the bottom, we had one or two at every haul. The
two fishermen were fine specimens of strong, well-built Englishmen.
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