28 OCTOBER 1955, Page 28

'Cr ATTING'

More references to eel fishing conic from a reader .who lives at Littleton Panell and says that the use of a bundle of worms was known as 'clatting for eels' when she passed the time in this way at a South Devon resort in 1930. while:- another correspondent, a gentleman of eighty-five, says he used the method in a mill pond near Eastbourne at the end of the last century. 'Worms were threaded on a length of worsted wound into a loop which, was tied to a piece of wire fastened to a stick,' he says. 'Before the eels could get their teeth out of the worsted they were swung into the boat.

I tried the same thing on a stream but did not catch many eels.'