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Fisheries:
Fishing Gear and Boats |
Fishing Gear
Fishing gear may be lowered from a boat, set in one place (static gear), towed or dragged behind a vessel, or dropped around a school of fish. Gear used depends on the fish.
Most basic is a hand line with a baited hook. Hand lines used with bottom fish had two leaders, or gangings, with hooks, on each line. Fishermen jigged for cod from the deck of a schooner, sloop, or dory, bobbing the line up and down to attract the fish.
Trawl lines, now called longlines, became popular after the Civil War. Trawl lines are usually 300 fathoms (1,800 feet) long, made of quarter-inch thick tarred cotton line with hooks on gangings or leaders tied every fathom. In dory fishing, each fisherman worked about six tubs of trawl, or six lines. Carried to the fishing grounds by schooner, fishermen left in dories and set their trawls, usually at night, to be brought in the next morning. During the day they baited the hooks and prepared the trawl, as well as splitting, salting, and stowing the previous day’s catch.
A gill net is a fixed net set on the bottom, with a mesh size designed to catch certain fish. When fish of the targeted size try to swim through the net, their gills are caught in the mesh. Gill nets have been used for inshore cod and salmon fishing and for offshore pelagic fish. A floating, non-fixed version of a gill net, used for catching pelagic fish, is the drift net. Drift nets can be miles long and are blamed for killing many marine mammals, including whales and dolphins.
Mackerel and herring swim in schools near the surface and are easy to see. They were caught with a a net called a purse seine, perhaps a thousand feet long and fifty feet deep. A seine boat, towed by a larger
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fishing vessel, sets the net around the school of fish, with the beginning and end of the circle at the schooner. Floats at the top and lead weights at the bottom keep the net in place. A line pulls the bottom closed like a purse. As the line is pulled and the net brought in, the school of fish is corralled, and fishermen use dip nets to scoop fish out of the seine net and into the boat.
A weir is a fixed net, built from shore to catch herring, mackerel, and salmon where there are large tides. A line of piles is driven out from the shore in a loop or heart-shape. Branches woven together fill the spaces between the piles. When fish enter the weir they swim in circles, not knowing how to get out. At low tide fishermen in small boats set a purse seine net within the weir and scoop fish into their boats. Weir fishing was the common method used to catch small herring for sardines in Washington County.
Lobster traps, using bait to attract lobsters, are today’s main form of fixed gear.
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At the end of the nineteenth century the British introduced the beam trawl, a beam hanging out over the side of the fishing vessel with a large net attached which was towed along the bottom. It was not well accepted in America. Its successor, the otter trawl, did become popular, when combined with the steam engine to tow it behind the trawler. The net is a giant funnel, wide at the opening and narrow at the other end, called the cod end. Its mouth is pulled open by vanes or doors as it moves through the water. Usually the otter trawl is set to run along the bottom, catching cod, haddock, flounder, and other bottom fish. Scallop dredges or nets work on a similar principle, but just use an iron bar to hold the net open. Large trawl nets are used in mid-ocean, and sometimes are towed by two vessels, in pairs fishing.
Boats: From Oar to Sail to Engines
A fisherman’s boat is transportation to the fishing grounds, a fishing platform, a processing facility, and a temporary warehouse. The kind of boat depends on the location of the fishing grounds, the fishing gear, and the targeted fish.
Inshore fishing usually required only a [pulling boat] or a small sloop. Inshore craft included the double-ender, or peapod; the dory; and the wherry. In early days small schooners were also used in the inshore fisheries.
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Offshore fishing required overnight trips from a few days to a few months. The schooner was the most popular design. Schooners changed over time, for a while emphasizing speed, and later emphasizing safety and carrying capacity.
Before the Civil War, most fishing was done by hand line from a boat or vessel. Afterwards, new techniques included trawl line fishing and purse seine fishing for mackerel. These techniques resulted in the use of larger schooners that could carry a number of dories on deck or tow a 38-foot seine boat. They also required increased capital that Mainers did not have and resulted in Maine’s declining offshore fishing fleet.
After 1900 the demand for fresh fish grew and was met by the availability of mechanically-produced ice, better transportation via rail and steamer, and a new fishing method: dragging a large net . Dragging, which came to be called trawling, developed in Europe with sailing vessels and worked best with powerful engines. Steam trawlers needed lots of fuel and an engineer plus assistants, and were not popular in the United States.
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It was not until the 1920s that internal combustion engines large enough to efficiently tow nets made dory trawling from schooners obsolete.
On the Maine coast the introduction of internal combustion engines changed lobster boats from sailing sloops to motor boats, first narrow open boats with spray hoods, to wide, large vessels up to 45 feet long. These boats now have permanent deck houses, large engines, and all the latest navigational electronics. Lobster boat construction has evolved from wood to fiberglass.
Fishermen made a rapid switch to engined boats, over a period of only a few years. In 1902, engined boats were not counted in New England fishery census reports. Two years later motor boats exceeded both sail and rowing boats in value. By 1908, the number of engined vessels exceeded sailing vessels; and of small boats, about half were engined and the rest mostly rowed.
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