CARMARTHEN - Midnight arrived before the two coraclemen returned to the river bank, their paddles virtually silent as they stroked the black, slow-moving water. They stepped ashore, rolled up their net and shouldered their boats, then displayed the reward for their night's labour - a single sewin.
It was a beautiful fish, silver and glistening, but it was just the one.
"There used to be more fish than this," said John Hopkins, aged 62, as he made his way up the small jetty. "There is not a lot in it for us."
Complain as they might about the size of their catch of sewin, or sea trout, compared with that of 20 or even 10 years ago, the small band of coraclemen of Carmarthen, Pembrokeshire, may soon be facing even greater problems.
This week was the deadline for them to object to a review of fishing policy that would give the British Environment Agency the power to cut the number of coracle licences on the three rivers in west Wales on which the ancient boats are still used.
The proposals to preserve fish stocks in the review, jointly written by the Welsh National Assembly and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, would deprive licence holders of their right to appeal.
The coraclemen believe it could mark the end of a tradition that dates back 2000 years.
Mike Elias, aged 50, the secretary of the Carmarthen Coracle and Netsmen's Association, said: "They will be able to cut our licences whenever they want while there is not one proposal that promotes or maintains net fishing.
"It was a fulltime occupation for my father but increasing regulation and the cutting of the fishing seasons has now made it impossible for us to earn a living from it. There are only about 25 boats left fishing but, if the review has its way, there will soon be none.
Though the first written records of the flat-bottomed boats - traditionally made from animal skins but now from pitch-covered cloth - are in the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis, a 12th-century cleric, many historians believe they are pre-Roman.
Martin Fowler, who runs the National Coracle Centre in Newcastle Emlyn, Dyfed, believes they date from the Bronze Age. While they were once widespread across Britain and Ireland, there are now only three rivers on which coracles are still used for fishing - the Tywi, which flows through Carmarthen, the Teifi, which passes through Cardigan, and the Taf, which reaches the sea at St Clears.
Between the three rivers there are just 25 licences issued, allowing the coraclemen to fish with nets for sea trout and salmon from March 1 to July 31.
It is not easy work. Fishing only at night when their nets are less visible to the fish, the coraclemen drift downstream in pairs, holding their net - 40ft long and 2ft across - between them.
"It is skilled work. It looks easy but it is something that has to be learned," said Raymond Rees, 67, a net fisherman for more than 40 years.
"We have fished this river for 800 years. We are not all goody-two-shoes but we are not idiots either. A fisherman wants to look after his own interests. He is not going to take all the fish so that there are none left for next year.
"The trouble is that the scientists are lumping us all together. As far as they are concerned, we are all [commercial] netsmen."
Everyone agrees there are fewer fish. Some blame pollution, some blame over-fishing on the river. But the coraclemen say it is what is happening out at sea that is threatening fish stocks.
Rees blames the commercial fishing operations that drop their drift nets at the mouth of the rivers, hauling up sewin and salmon in nets intended for non-river fish.
- INDEPENDENT
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