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Fish Trap Gardening

It's not often the worlds of two of my passions, freshwater biology and gardening coincide, but they did last week when Threadspider and I took one of our regular trips to our local garden centre. Here we are at the Garden Bygones section where all kinds of items are for sale. This is the place where I bought my vintage potato fork a few years back and I'm always tempted to buy some of the old apple boxes.

The strange looking contraption you can see in the photo is a salmon fish trap used on the River Severn during the 1950s. I was rather surprised to find a couple of metal ones on display as I've only seen ones woven from willow before. You can see the more traditional structure and an explanation of the fishing here. I felt rather sad to see them as it probably means someone has stopped fishing the Severn in the traditional way: it's a technique that's dying out as and when the fishermen retire. However, looking on the bright side using them for a different purpose is far better than just throwing them away.

I'd love to have one as a companion for the woven one I have in my study as I write this. A friend brought it back as a gift from her trip to Cameroon to remind me of my fishy past when I researched salmon and trout populations. That was here in the UK rather than in Cameroon, but I did appreciate her thoughtfulness. However, the price of the salmon trap on display is a bit too steep for me. Mark managed to acquire some for Otter Farm recently, so I'm hopeful I might find a cheaper source soon. I won't be using it for the purpose suggested on the label you can just see in the picture though: it's for growing sweat peas ;)

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