Traditional Fishing Techniques

Anchored in Port Leone we watched the fishermen. One old guy (potterer we called him) rowed gently all round the bay with a big wicker basket full of line and hooks gently dropping them over the side for a kilometre or so. Took him just over an hour I guess. Next day he’s back bringing it all up again with maybe half a dozen fish. It looked as though, in the calm, he could just about pull the boat along from one hook to the next – just an occasional row. He did break his line once where our anchor chain had drifted over his line during the night. It looked like this was par for the course though and he wasn’t too bothered – he just went to his next float and worked back to the break on the other side.

On a larger scale six guys arrived early in the morning and lay out a bight of net – big floats at each end and a row of small red ones all along every couple of feet. They made a circle of net and then retreated to the ruined windmill to watch the sun come up, and have breakfast, and talk, and smoke, and listen, and watch, and talk some more, and joke. Three hours later the boat’s engines bought the net back in again. I think they probably ended up with more than six fish each this way but it is still not much more than subsistence fishing. Very interesting to watch.

Port Leone is a small abandoned village on the island of Kalamos. It’s a bit sad and sombre. Here are some pictures. Picturesque and rubbish-strewn in equal measure.