Shooting the seine at Sennen.

With a little help from Google a surprising number of results turned up with regard to the Sennen boys and their endeavour to fish for mullet in quantity using a beach seine - it seems that many ashore take a dim view of what they see as mass slaughter on the beach!

The first article appears courtesy of an angling forum where many of the forum's followers see catching such a large shoal of fish as a henious crime given many of their comments.

Another forum, this time showing the same technique used in Port Erin on the Isle of Man that engendered similar reactions.

The third, an article taken from an American paper, reports a tale of village rivalry and dates back to January 1960. Apparently the boys from Par had also heard that there were huge shoals of mullet in Whitsand Bay and headed down to Sennen armed with the necessary beach seine and a boat. The story was also covered by a national daily here - sensationalised to some extent because of a slight misunderstanding twixt a certain Sennen fisherman and the paper's reporter, whom during the course of an interview held on the beach looking out to sea and the gulls diving on the fish asked what was to happen next, "Well, we'll be shooting soon" was the reply - little did the reporter know of fishing terminology of course as he sped away to the nearest phone box to telephone the editor and announce that war was about to break out and that the rival fishermen were about to start shooting one another!