John Luff and John Woodford on Fishing

John L: I used to go oystering.

Well, everybody used to pack up potting in about November and then they started, I think years ago there used to be oysters in Osborne Bay and then nobody bothered for ages and ages and then all of a sudden they decided that was quite a lot of oysters in Osborne Bay.

I bought another boat for oystering and we used to fish from November to Christmas, we used to fish off Seaview on the Warner Bank for oysters.

Lovely oysters out there but then after Christmas you used to go to Cowes and fish in Osborne Bay all the winter until March, I suppose. And then a chap used to come from Southampton and buy the oysters. Pay you cash there and then.

Lisa: How much did they sell for?

John L: Quite a lot of money they were. I can’t remember exactly how much but a fair bit.

Lisa: And how do you catch an oyster?

John L: It’s like a trawl, it’s a metal framed trawl with netting on it and it just scrapes along the bottom. It just skims the bottom like that. You get a lot of rubbish as well with it.

Lisa Did you have a different type of boat for doing that?

John L: Yeah, a bigger one.

John W: With an outboard then, you didn’t row there.

John L: My oyster boat had big diesel in it and then you have two trawls, one on either side.