Referring to Clovelly brings to mind that the fishermen have been experiencing a hard time of it.

Clovelly herrings – pride of the sea – have been very scarce, the fishermen have had poor earnings, and the price of butter in the Bideford market is going up smartly. The stranger is always at a loss to understand the connection between herrings and the price of butter, but the explanation volunteered is that a good supply of nutritious and savoury herrings keeps down the demand for butter for home consumption at a time when it is generally getting scarce, whilst if there is a shortness of herrings the demand and meagre supply coming together send the price of the produce of the cow up with a bound.

Clovelly fisherman have had but little luck for some seasons now, and the summer visitors have been more than ever welcome, but they must not give up home. Let them take heart by the experience of the South Cornish fishers. Owing to an inexplicable absence of the usual schools of pilchards, many of these men were reduced to the verge of starvation but last month the fish reappeared, and were caught to the value of £5,000 as compared with only £1,350 in the corresponding month of last year.

Gazette article dated 20 November 1906