Andy Butler on Fishing

Well that’s the Solent Oyster Fishery. That’s a whole saga in its own to be honest and there is actually plans at the moment trying to revive it.

It was like the Klondike, it was a massive business. Two old boys … there used to be a Fishery in Victorian times and apparently a couple of old boys decided they thought “I wonder if there’s any there now?”

This was back in the ‘60s and they got a little boat, a little hand dredge I suppose, and they discovered it was full of oysters. They’d been wiped out by over fishing and a thing called a tingle whelk which drills into the oyster shell and kills it, and anyway it sort of escalated didn’t it?

God, it was incredible.

The money was brilliant. I mean we used to earn at the start of the season, I mean this was 1976 I think I started, you know like £1000 per week, that was my share. It was good money and then it tailed off, but it was still very good