The life of a Cornish fisherman

By Charlie Jaycock

The life of a fisherman can be a lonely one; leaving home before anyone else is out of bed, and back well after dark. When I was a child I didn’t see much of my grandad Charlie, and it’s only in his retirement I realised how little he was around. After working on his first fishing boat from the age of six, potting for lobsters and crabs, he flitted between fishing jobs throughout his life, mostly on a day trawler. This is a little of his story….

“I left school at 16. I was a grammar school boy. The teachers were disgusted that I planned to be a fisherman; all except one. “I understand you’re going to be a fisherman?” “Yes sir” I told him. “Well I wish you luck” he said. “I’d leave school at 4:00 o’clock to go pilchard fishing. Drift-netting meant you went to sea at night. The net was made up of several nets joined together, then suspended below the surface on 18 feet of lines. The fish would rise up in the evening to the depth of your net and would poke their heads in and catch them behind their gills. We worked about 3/4 of a mile out to sea in the winter, and about a mile in the summer. Pulling the end up every so often to check for any catch, quietly, and with no engine running, drop it back, then half an hour later we’d pull it up again. If it was still empty you’d drop it back or sometimes we’d have another try somewhere else. At times you could get quite a good weight of fish and the boat would sit down in the water from the weight of them.”

“I did that for a few years, then went into the army for my National Service. After I finished I thought I was going to go back to the same job, but in those two years things changed quite a bit. Pilchard fishing had gone into decline, and the summer fishing never earned as much money. The boat I had been working on had become a shark fishing boat, carrying paying passengers and anglers.”

“Once you’re a commercial fisherman you don’t throw fish away, but shark fishing was a big waste. We’d bring them in to satisfy the customers, and the next day throw them back overboard dead. Nowadays, they measure the fish, estimate the weight and return them to sea alive. They still do shark fishing for pleasure though.”

In the intervening decades, after Charlie did his National Service, he obtained his own fishing licence, and worked in various commercial trawling jobs. He became a shark skipper for a few years, getting to know his customers and making a name for himself in his local home town of Looe. But working in an increasingly regulated and problematic industry, attempting to make ends meet, was never going to be an easy way for anyone to

You may be wondering what Charlie is up to these days. In his words “not a great deal”. He has now gone full circle, crab and lobster potting just like he used to when he was a young boy. During the summer season he’ll take his 16ft boat out when the weather is fine and the conditions are good, so that he can try his luck with his old pots.

The small town of Looe once had a prolific and thriving fishing industry, with trawling becoming more popular in the last few decades. Sadly, as a consequence of overfishing and the resulting ‘red tape’ restrictions and quotas imposed by fishing authorities, Looe has now shied away from taking on big trawling boats. Their numbers have dropped from around 25 trawlers to being able to count them on one hand. Looe finally closed its fish auction doors in 2019 and this has inevitably deterred any local fishermen, who may have been considering a career trawling off the South Cornwall coast.

The teachers were disgusted that I planned to be a fisherman; all except one. I understand you want to be a fisherman Charlie? He said to me. Yes sir, I told him.

Well, I wish you luck, he said.