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MACKERELS.
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the whole coast of Suffolk was estimated at £14,000. In 1823, the number of Mackerel taken at Yarmouth was computed at 1,420,000.

The capital employed in the Devon and Cornwall fishery was, some years ago, estimated at £200,000.

Two principal modes of net-fishing are employed for the capture of the Mackerel. The first is by drift-nets. A number of nets, twenty feet wide and twenty fathoms long, are attached by one side, in succession, to a stout rope, called the drift-rope, which is well corked. The boat being at the distance of some leagues from shore, throws overboard the end of the rope, to which is affixed a large buoy. She is then put before the wind, and as the rope runs out over the stern, the successive nets are carried overboard with it, and hang down perpendicularly like a long wall, to the depth of twenty feet from the floating rope. When all is run out, the rope is shifted from the stern to the bows, the sails are taken in, and the boat rides by the rope instead of her cable, which is thus kept taut, and in the line of the wind. The meshes of the nets are made sufficiently large to admit the head of the Mackerel, but no more; so that the fish, swimming against the long wall of nets, are caught by the gill-covers and prevented from advancing or retiring.

After remaining out, commonly, all night, the nets are hauled in by means of a capstan; each net is taken off in turn and its produce secured. A single haul has been known to yield fish of the value of nearly £70.

The second mode is by the ground-seine. "A coil of rope, about two hundred fathoms in length, with