In 1922 the salmon season began on the first of March. There were two boats fishing from Exmouth, fifteen from Topsham and six from Lympstone. Between them these boats took five hundred salmon in the first week of the season.
The largest single catch was made by a Lympstone boat. There were thirty nine fish leaping in the bunt of the net. The next best catch was made by a Topsham boat, a poor second with sixteen salmon. The record catch, remembered from the April of a few years before, was of fifty six fish in one haul. I would like to have seen that!
The Exmouth Journal reported: “…It is a great advantage that the fish this seaon are being taken and marketed, thus assisting the exchequers of many a poor household, making possible the payment of tradesmen’s bills long overdue … For some months past the salmon fishermen of the Exe have had an exceedingly lean time, and the present abundance of fish is a veritable godsend to them.”
How precarious they must have been in those workhouse days, the 'exchequers' of the Estuary's fishing families!
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