Andy Butler on Fishing

When I say fishing we were potting. We were after crab and lobster and our catch … it was always difficult on the Island ‘cos there was nobody bought stuff on the Island.

You could always sell it sort of locally in a small way but you couldn’t do it commercially so we used to drive it up to London or we would … and then I eventually dealt with a dealer, well two or three actually, Portsmouth or Poole, so you had to shift it off the mainland.

And then there was a time when a dealer opened a place up at Fishbourne which made it very easy to sell but of course then everybody else could do the same so then people, fishermen all over the place ‘cos it was easy to sell. In the winter we used to go … my wife didn’t go but I used to go oyster fishing with a friend of mine which was OK, but it was not a particularly pleasant thing to do but it was very well paid.

You know, we used to earn a lot of money and before that, before I went oystering in the winter, my wife and I used to go winkle picking which sounds weird but that again was very well paid, and we used to do quite well at that and we went with the two friends that fished from St Lawrence