Book Review: 'A Guide to Cornish Fish' by Jenny & Bill Scolding

Jenny & Bill Scolding A GUIDE TO CORNISH FISH

Isbn 978-0-9572851-0-1  email: fish@serpentinedesign.freeserve.co.uk

Cornwall: Serpentine Design 2012

From ‘bait to plate’ was the challenge, and this little guide more than meets that objective. Written by Hypatia member, Jenny, and designed together with photographs by Bill, the two lay open the dangerous, tough, obsessive way of life that has become an innate part of Cornish existence through the generations.

Anyone with an eye to selecting, preparing and cooking FISH should not be without this book. There a pictoral catalogue of the fish from which you can spot the ‘one’ type that interests in a glance: sharks, flatfish, skates and rays, white fish, oily fish, gurnards and mullet, bream, bass and wrasse, rockpool fish, long fish, shellfish, exotics and those of all shapes and colours. But expanding on this are the people and organisations they founded to back up and give support to the ‘way of life in fishing’.

Of special interest is the section that the author shares about the ‘Trail-blazers’ like Jonathan Couch, the man of science who spent his life observing fish habits, and those (including women like Nora Bolitho) who founded the National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen.  Here there is history, art, description, and a review of the fishing gear that is (and was) employed in trapping and catching.

--Melissa Hardie