Prawning in rock pools
A summer morning on a Cornish beach at low tide, armed with a prawn net, will transport you back to your childhood
Mike Daunt is transported back to his childhood days
The first living creature that I ever captured was a prawn. I caught it in a drop net from the end of the Cobb in Lyme Regis. My aunt had a house there and I went to Lyme regularly with my mother in the summer. In those days, she had a lover – the actor Robert Newton. “Uncle Bobbie” loved using the nets and I remember vividly walking slowly down the hill from Theo’s Cottage to the end of The Cobb holding his hand. When we arrived, Bobbie unfolded his deckchair and watched as I lowered the net, with its foul bait of rotting fish, into the sea. He then produced a bottle from his pocket and took an enormous swig. I thought it was Lucozade and one day asked if I could have some. “Of course, dear boy,” boomed Bobbie and handed me the bottle. It was, of course, whisky and tasted disgusting but I swallowed it out of good manners.
The years passed but Bobbie kept in touch with me and often invited me to a show he was in. However, the drink finally caught up with him and shortly after playing the detective Mr Fix in the film Around the World in
Eighty Days, he died. He was only 51. I wept many tears for I remembered him for his kindness and his love of prawning.
However, those idyllic childhood days had given me a passion for catching prawns and shrimps. There is as much difference between prawns and shrimps as there is between hares and rabbits. Shrimps are easy to catch. On a sandy beach at low tide all that is needed is a push net and it is sometimes possible to achieve a couple of gallons of shrimps in two hours. Almost any month will do but a calm sea is needed, even at low tide. Use a 6ft span net and push it gently along the sandy bottom with the water at about knee level. Here is a small tip: the best place to shrimp is opposite the outlet from a sewer. Do not be put off. The shrimps abound and are perfectly edible. Prawns, however, are a different matter. They only come inshore when the sea is warm enough and thus are only available in the summer months. When I was a boy and fished with Uncle Bobbie from the Cobb, we never caught a great many and a pint was a good catch. I
As the sun had time to warm the newly exposed pools, catches were greater
was talking about this with a friend and was thrilled to find that he was as enthusiastic as I am about catching prawns but that he was far more knowledgeable.
Martin Petherick is proudly Cornish, his family having lived there for generations. His great-great-grandfather and his brother were both mining engineers from St Austell and while visiting Hodbarrow in Cumbria in about 1840 they noticed that the beach was a strange brown colour. Quickly realising that this denoted large deposits of iron ore, they bought the beach. As Cornish historian and poet AL Rowse, a neighbour to the Petherick family, announced, “They left Cornwall barefooted and returned with shoes on.” They then bought Porthpean House, near Charlestown, in 1850, and it has been in the family ever since.
When Petherick’s father, Christopher, inherited it in the 1980s, he spent large amounts of time on the beach below. Foraging for food was a natural way of life and he learnt all about living from the shore from the local fishermen, in particular how, in the summer months, to catch prawns – a skill he passed on to his sons. Martin Petherick and his brother, Tom, grew up on the beach and spent most of their school summer holidays foraging on the shore.
spring tides
Prawns like warm water so the ideal time to catch them is on the largest spring tide in late July and August. The perfect conditions are when the sea is dead calm and there is a blazing sun. The reason for this is that as the sea exposes the rock pools in which the prawns live, the sun warms them and the prawns become sleepy and far less aware of any possible danger. Sadly, the net required for their capture cannot be bought in a shop. It needs to be diamond shaped, the equilateral sides approximately a foot to 15 inches. I borrowed an old one from Petherick and asked my local blacksmith to make up the frame and attach it to a shortened broom handle. I sewed on the net myself, using an old, coarse fishing keepnet.
There are two ways of catching the prawns. The first is to find a rock pool at low tide with plenty of overhanging seaweed. The prawns attach themselves to the seaweed almost as if they are sunbathing. At times, they are so sleepy that they will allow you to pick them by hand. However, mostly the net is pushed under the rock and then lifted up sharply through the seaweed on which the prawns are hanging. It is a wonderful sight to see a net full of translucent prawns thrashing in the bottom. The second method is to wait until the tide turns and starts to flood. This method is colourfully referred to by the Petherick family as “stalking prawns”. Now you stand in a gully between the rocks with your net in the water. You can see the prawns coming towards you slowly with the tide and one or, sometimes if you’re lucky, two prawns will swim over the net. Then it is lifted gently so as not to frighten them. If it is lifted clumsily they are lightening fast and will shoot backwards quicker than an Italian tank.
Thus, when Petherick kindly invited me to stay at his family home for a weekend and go on a prawning expedition, I could not have been more excited. “There’s a very big spring tide at the end of July,” he said, “the conditions should be perfect.” Now I have a brother, Roger, who is equally keen on this kind of foraging expedition and I asked if he could join us if he stayed in a nearby B&B. However, Petherick, being a generous soul, insisted that he should stay as well.
We arrived in time for dinner on Saturday and discovered that we had come to one of the most beautiful houses by the sea in Britain. Porthpean House is Daphne Du Maurier epitomised. It is 18th-century loveliness looking out across a sea of cerulean blue. It is unique and private, and as I was shown around I was deeply envious of Petherick’s childhood for it is a boy’s dream home. Up until three years ago it was lived in by Petherick’s sprightly 91-year-old mother, Charlotte, but she has now moved into a nearby family cottage and the house is almost entirely devoted to holiday lets. However, this particular week, as the tides were perfect for prawning, Petherick had kept it for himself. I was shown to Lulu’s room and cannot imagine anywhere more romantic and lovely to sleep. It has unbroken views over an amethyst sea and I was late for breakfast because I was so happy to be sitting and looking at such beauty.
heading for the beach
In the morning, slightly hungover following Petherick’s generosity, we set off for the beach and arrived about an hour and a half before low tide. We began to work our nets immediately, pushing them under the seaweed and working them below the overhang. Initially, we caught no prawns
That sun-filled expedition took us all back to our childhoods
at all but the nets were full of what I took to be small shrimps. However, they did not have the brown flecks of a shrimp and had humped backs; I realised quickly that these were all baby prawns. The rock pools were alive with them, which shows what a clean, healthy and fecund sea we have. Then I spotted, among the myriad babies, an adult prawn. I was as excited as when I caught my first salmon and immediately wanted to show it to someone. “Look at this,” I shouted to my brother, holding up my hand, out of which the prawn immediately, and wisely, jumped back into the sea. However, after this minor disaster, the prawns started to be caught thick and fast. I also began to learn the most likely places where they would lie. They particularly like deep recesses under the rocks in water perhaps two-foot deep and where there are thick columns of bladderwrack hanging down. Sometimes we fished in pairs, starting at either end of a seaweed-hung rock and working towards each other. This often paid dividends with both nets jumping with prawns. There was no doubt that, as the tide receded and the sun had more time to warm the newly exposed pools, the catches were greater, proving Petherick’s theory that the prawns are far dopier when the water has been warmed.
After low tide we slowly worked our way back towards the beach, often fishing the pools that we had tried on the way out. Many of them were far more productive because they were warmer and a new run of prawns had come into them. At the end of the day, when we pooled our catch, we had about six pints of prawns. They need to be cooked in heavily salted boiling water and then are food for the most choosy of gods.
I know that I speak for all of us on that sun-filled expedition when I say that it was particularly wonderful because it took us all back to our childhoods; to salt and sand smeared arms and legs and the tang of the sea on the wind. I only know that, when we returned to that great house, stopping on the way at a local pub to drink ice-cold draught Cornish cider, I had that wonderful feeling of deeply contented tiredness that is synonymous with the happiness of a day of childish memories.