Letter to the Editor: As a young child, my parents would take me on holidays to Aberystwyth. We would stay with family and friends and do all the usual things like visiting the beach, harbour etc.

One year, while staying with family friends in Penparcau, (Ritchie and Ewenna) we all went on a picnic down by the Afon Ystwyth behind Tan y Bwlch beach.

I would have been eight or nine at the time. While playing along the river bank i saw a number of people wading in the river. I noticed they were holding a variety of different types of nets. Some of the nets were stretched over what looked like the rim of a bicycle wheel. I asked our friends what the people were doing.

I was told they were fishing for ‘drunkies’.

Drunkies, I was told, was the name for sea trout or sewin. It was explained to me that the sea trout/sewin would swim from the sea and enter the river mouth by the harbour. When they swam from sea water to fresh water the fish seemed to get drunk and come to the surface. This is what the people where waiting for. They could be seen scooping up the ‘drunkies’ and taking them to family members waiting on the river bank.

While on a recent visit to Aber, I visited that same river bank and beach. So many happy memories of that time came back to me.

As I walked along the river I met and asked a few of the local people if they new anything of ‘fishing for drunkies’. But no one had any knowledge of the practice.

Did I dream this occurrence. I don’t think so. Do any of your readers have any knowledge about this practice?

Mike Hawkins,

Mountain Ash