Cape Cod is a number of things

by Allan Neal

Weir Fishing

Spring comes slowly to the Cape. She comes with halting footsteps, hesitant and capricious, one step forward and half a step back. You wait, and you are happier for the waiting, for at last she gives the earth her full attention and the land is renewed and green and shining amidst its four blue seas. It is the blue seas that have to do with spring’s timidity. In summer they are the air-conditioners which give the Cape comfortable temperature while the nearby cities of the Mainland swelter. In November, their warmth holds back the winter and the threat of snow turns to rain. Then, until they are warmed again, they will, in April, hold back the springtime. Then, when your heart is ready for sunlight and the promise of spring, there may be a series of gray days with a chilling blast of moist air from the Sound, and in your impatience it seems as if it must be fated to be a year without a summer. From the still-naked branches of ancient elm trees a flock of crows caw defiance at the rolling mists from the shore. The first-come robins hop disconsolately about the grass as if they wished they were elsewhere and the crocus looks brave but somehow misplaced. It is the kind of day to make you look afield for comforting affirmations that spring is really on its way after all. Then you will see the little buds of green on the lilac hedge that only yesterday were not there. Perhaps through the opened door of a silver-gray barn you may see a Cape Cod boy putting the last perfect and gleaming touches to a fishing rod. But when you pass a certain large field where the fishermen’s nets have long been spread for mending and creosoting and find them no longer there, you know that the weirs are out and, weather or no, it is Spring.

Not so long ago, standing on the beaches of the Sound in spring, one could look along shore to east or west and make out the shadowy forests of the weir poles with their intricate web of nets stretching from the shallows of the land out into the fishways of the Sound. They, like the fleets of small fishing schooners that once set out from all our inlets to gather in the fish-harvest, were once an important part of the Cape’s economy. Like the fishing schooners, the number of weirs along the shore has declined today, for they are expensive to maintain, both in capital and in the demands upon the men who run them for skill and hard work. But the fish are still there, and still, in spring, some weirs are set out along the shore to trap them. The weirs consist of a long, leader line of poles and netting that runs straight off-shore. At the outer end of the leader more fish fences run at an angle to the line of poles setting out from the land. The fish, ever leery of inshore, shallow waters, follow the leader line of nets outward until they find themselves without visible means of retreat and the only obvious means of escape from this mix-up appears to be through a small opening which seems to be the more a logical course because of the number of fish-brethren swimming about behind it. When they have entered the beckoning hole they are in the Pound where the mysterious maze of nets spreads not only around them, but beneath them, and they are doomed.

There could hardly be a sweeter awakening than to that of the chug-chit-chug of the weirs boats heard across the sparkling waters of the Sound in late spring. When I was growing up I would frequently rush to the window to watch the white wake from their broad-beamed sterns all the way to the weirs. When I knew from the sound of the returning boats—with their engine sound muffled now and the boats settling low under the weight of pay-load—I was punctually at the wharf to watch wide-eyed the unloading of the silver harvest. Trying all the while to keep out of the busy commotion of the unloading, grading, and icing down of the fish for shipment to the waiting cities, I would, eventually, end up with a prize—a newspaper-wrapped parcel of tinker mackeral. The delicious, combined smells of wet newsprint, salt and the mysterious, dark regions of the sea went with me up the beach and homewards.

Once I took a closer look at the weir operation, rowing in a dory across the ornery bars at the river’s mouth to where the water lapped softly against a sturdy, white hull in the gray, pre-sunrise. I followed the men over the side into the wide, stubby, gray-painted fisherman that would take us to the weirs. Feeling clumsy in the midst of adult fishermen friends who were suddenly full of business and doing all the right things at the right time, I sat quietly and somewhat miserably as the vessel made its way towards the nets. It was colder than I ever thought it could be on the Sound and the borrowed oilskins that protected me from the salt spray were stiff and had an uncompromising coldness of their own. But all of that was soon forgotten in the excitement of the arrival at the mysterious sea-fences combined with the glories of a sunrise over Chatham. Then the whole boat was alive with activity and very soon it was alive with fish. With hardened hands the fishermen grasped the nets and from the center of the Pound they drew the wonderful fish into the boat, a heavy, swirling, beautiful and ghastly, silver and multi-colored horde of tautog, cod, mackeral and haddock, and strange and unexpected things of the sea. In the capacious, interior of the rolling, settling vessel I was soon awash with them, knee-deep and more, and it was all the fish anyone could want for a long, long time. On the way into Port there seemed to be a good deal more than a sufficiency—and there were also squid. The day was now warmer—and now only through the greatest exertions did I maintain my sea-worthiness. Back at the river, which, with an assist from the incoming tide we navigated with style and without recourse to dory, I did not linger that day to watch the catch sent on its way to Boston.

It was some time before I realized how much I had really enjoyed my trip to the weirs but it was no time before I had gained a tremendous new admiration and respect for the men who farmed them. There are fewer vessels chig-chugging to fewer weirs in the Sound now, but still on a gray morning in April you can discover that the nets and the long stacks of silver poles have left their landlubber existence in the fields of the Cape to go to work on the salt water farms. And still across the blue waters of the Sound you can hear the music of the little vessels on their way to the nets. Then you know that the men of the Cape are reaping the harvest for the appetite of the city—and most especially you know that it is spring.

Not All Fishing Is From A Boat

Not all weir fishing is done from a boat. Across the Cape from the Sound is Cape Cod Bay and there, taking advantage of their unusual oceanography, some ingenious north-siders have a different kind of weir-fishing operation which, so far as I know, is unique. At many sections of the Bay, the flats, at low tide, extend so far out from the beach that their outer rims at high tide are well within the fish lanes. Taking advantage of this feature, the men of the north-side set their nets on the flats in such a way that at low water the Pound of the weirs with all its flopping captives was all but on dry land. To harvest the catch they needed no chugging weir boat. Instead they used a high-wheeled cart, horse-drawn, in which they set out over the flats to return heavy-laden with the day’s catch. Nowadays you can still see weir-fishing being done in this manner but the vehicle is more often a rusting Model T and it will never take the place for me of the sea-going horses and their faded blue carts. These carts were built for a single purpose. They belonged more to the sea than to the land and their pilots deserved the title “Captain” as surely as did their brethren on deep-water vessels—for the flats were tricky with channels and it takes more than a bit of knowing to plan a working trip out and back in the face of the incoming tide. I have often watched this strange kind of fishing on the north-side, following the blue carts to the Pound to watch the loading of the fish harvest. There was once a young girl who, with great respect addressed her grandfather as “Captain” and I can’t remember that anyone thought there was anything funny about it. Neither was there about her ability as a “hand” when the cart’s creaking journey to the Pound was completed and the work of sorting and loading commenced. She would wade into the squirming sea of fish with all the aplomb and skill of an expert, wielding shovel and pitchfork, and setting about her to left and right until, at last the cart was filled and the sea-going horse turned towards his home port. If I knew where that young girl of the blonde hair and blue dungarees were now I would tell her how wonderfully skillful she seemed to me as she went about her work. I would thank her, and her Captain too, for an unforgettable picture of a blue cart with its flashing silver cargo making its unsteady way over the flats while, behind them, the lazy gulls swooped screaming over the culls of the Pound and the air had in it the wonderful taste of a fresh, incoming tide.

Not All Fishing Is For Fish

Not many years ago, and for the first time in over a century, a long tradition of temperance on Cape Cod faced a threat which was the result of a most curious harvest from the sea. It was in the days prior to and just after the Great Depression that an unexpected windfall came to many sections of the Cape. The narrow land was surrounded by the sea and the sea was the avenue to the free lands across the water who were not engaged in the noble experiment known as the Volstead Act. Many a Cape “Captain” along the coast heard once more the old ancestral call of the sea and without hesitation he accepted employment in ferrying loads of contraband spirits into the convenient, little rivers and harbors of the coast he knew so well. He played a dangerous kind of game partly for money, partly for the pure thrill of winning a kind of hare-and-hounds game of nautical skill from the Coast Guard, and partly from a conviction that the law was bad enough as to not merit full obedience. There is often a conviction that Mainland laws are not tailored to the precise needs of the Cape. So it came about that on dark nights there would be a good deal of activity along the shore and in the dim light of a morning after the gray hulk of a Coast Guard Cutter would appear, always late, but always game and eager.