Quintessential Cornish creeks and rivers as written about by Daphne du Maurier featured in this week's episode of This fishing Life as the camera focuses on two family businesses operating from opposite sides of the river Fal from where Falmouth gets its name...
sister and brother Nicky and Jason work two boats, one being a classic sail powered fishing boat towing a single dredge for oysters during the season that runs from October to March in the shallow waters...
the other is a forty foot wooden trawler that they have invested everything in so that they can fish all year round...
a move that sees them struggle, despite help from father for the whole summer as a succession of mechanical and gear problems make themselves apparent at seemingly every turn the boat makes...
at one moment, when the boat yet again, is awaiting a repair yet they set off their punt...
looking for mussels growing just under the waterline of pontoons and buoys in the rivers to literally scrape a living...
meanwhile, brothers Cameron, Ivor, and Magnus Henry work their multi-purpose boat for anything that will crawl or swim into their pots...
which not only includes brown crab...
but shrimps...
and even ballan wrasse for which there is an insatiable demand from fish farms as wrasse feed on the myriad of parasites tat flourish in fish farms...
single-handed trawl fisherman Peter Green works his...
boat throughout the year in and around Falmouth Bay...
years of experience and an intimate knowledge of the seabed littered with rocks, wrecks, old sailing ship anchors provide him with a living that Nicky and Jason in their new trawler Fair Morn will aim to emulate, mechanical challenges permitting...
the end of the programme see the both of them head back to their sail-powered oyster boat...
recounting the days when there were hundreds of fishermen and their families housed in the dozens of granite cottages lined the banks of the creeks and estuary - most of which have now become second homes - making it almost impossible for today's fishing families to ;live as close to their boats as they would like.
Next Tuesday evening on BBC2 will see Episode 4 focus on the men who work predominantly single-handed from punts or small inshore boats based in Penberth Cove, Sennen Cove, Newlyn and the Helford River.
