This Fishing Life: Falmouth's fishing female takes mussels, oysters and fish.

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.

Finally, some fish on the market in Newlyn!

Biggest bream on the market for awhile, but which bream?...

boxes of roe signal spawning time for some species like pollack...

which are caught on both rough ground and wrecks in fixed nets...

it's a flatfish, but which one?..

specimen brill...

in the depths of winter landings of fish like these John Dory...

and red mullet are light...

while rays of all types like these blondes...

and stars are plentiful...

the bulk of the quality fish on the market this morning were from the inshore trawl fleet...

some like the Harvest Reaper and New Venture made excellent landings of ray for their time at sea over the weekend...

Tom even had a good sized bass for his efforts...

while the Serene piled in on pollack...

the New Venture also picked up good hauls of Dover sole...

while the handline fleet filled half the fridge with mackerel from the weekend...

just missing Monday morning's market the Charisma lands her trip of hake and big whitefish...

under the watchful eye of staff from the MMO...

Newlyn Harbour, so good they named the boxes twice...

it's -1˚ this morning, not often vehicles in the harbour sparkle with frost...

not that Tom, cast in bronze ever feels the cold but his view of the crystal clear skies...

overt he bay are not as good as for those who live 'up Pail Hill'!

Saved by the sardines - a less than fishy #FishyFriday!

After a week of gales and strong winds heavy skies still hang over Newlyn and there are still boats between trips tied up, three Rowse crabbers...

half a dozen beam trawlers are yet to sail...

though throughout most of the week the sardine fleet have been able to put in quick trips taking advantage of the prevailing offshore wind including the Vesta who, until December was fishing away up in Fowey...

with a heavy swell in the bay taking a haul of 16-17 tons reduces any risks...

fish are brailed from her three seawater tanks, chilled with ice...

dropped into 400kg insulated tubs...

where more seawater and ice are added...

earlier in the week we were treated to episode 2 of This Fishing Life on BBC2 which focused entirely on the sardine fleet and the Cornish Sardine Management Association's trials and tribulations as they struggled with a reduced TAC imposed on them by the MSC...

though according to the Mayflower's skipper Pete Buckland, with a wry smile on his face, it's as much about the size of your gonads...

which, like the size of the fish marks on your sonar, as big as they are, if you haven't got them, you won't catch them...

as the port's youngest skipper James Roberts was finding out the hard way at the start of his first season as skipper of Ocean Fish's smallest boat in the fleet, the Resolute...

with many nights spent staring intently at the sonar screen and ever more elusive shoals of sardines...

eventually, after much perseverance and little to show for his efforts in the bank, him and his crew eventually began to get to grips with the ancient art of ring-netting...

and by the end of the season was making decent hauls of sardines...

and even anchovies. So far the series has brought into people's living rooms the reality of operating and lives of those fishing in Cornwall and just what it takes to make a living sufficient to keep the boat at sea and a roof over the family's heads. Particular credit must go to the camera work which has really given viewers the chance to feel as though they were in the wheelhouse anxiously staring at the fish-finding screens or amongst the gannets wheeling high over the boats as they shoot their nets. Roll on the episode 3!