Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

by Samuel Adams Drake

I walked afterward by the side of a seine two hundred fathoms in length, spread upon the grass in order to contract the meshes. One of them frequently costs above a thousand dollars, and is sometimes destroyed at the first casting by being caught on the ledges in shallow water.

An old hand can easily tell the difference between a school of mackerel and one of menhaden. The former rush in a body on the top of the water, while the shoal of porgees merely ripples the surface, as is sometimes seen when a moving body of water impinges against a counter-current. The mackerel takes the hook, while the porgee and herring never do.

The talk was more fishy here than in any place I have visited. Here they call a school, or shoal, "a pod of fish;" "we sot round a pod" being a common expression. The small vessels are called seiners. When they approach a school, the seine is carried out in boats, one end being attached to the vessel, except when a bad sea is running. I have seen the men standing up to the middle among the fish they were hauling in; and they are sometimes obliged to abandon half their draught.

The whole process of rendering menhaden into oil is less offensive to the olfactories than might be supposed. The works at Pemaquid Point are owned by Judson, Tarr, and Co., of Rockport, Massachusetts. As against the generally received opinion that they were destroying fish faster than the losses could be repaired, the unusual abundance of mackerel the last year was cited. Mackerel, however, are not ground up at the rate of many thousand barrels per day. It is easy to conjecture that present profit is more looked to than future scarcity. The product of menhaden is chiefly used in the adulteration of linseed-oil. This fish is probably the same called by the French "gasparot," and found by them in great abundance on the coasts of Acadia.

Some account of the habits of the mackerel, as given by veteran fishermen, is of interest to such as esteem this valuable fish—and the number is legion—if not in explanation of the seemingly purposeless drifting of the mackerel fleet along shore, which is, nevertheless, guided by calculation.

In early spring the old breeding fish come into the bays and rivers to spawn. They then return northward. These mackerel are not apt to take the hook, but are caught in weirs and seines, a practice tending to inevitable scarcity in the future. The parent fish come back, in September, to the localities where they have spawned, and, taking their young in charge, proceed to the warmer waters west and south. Few if any mackerel spawn south of Cape Cod.

By the time this migration occurs, the young fish have grown to six or seven inches in length, and are called "tinkers." They frequently take the bait with avidity, but are too small for market. When this school comes along, the fishermen prepare to follow, saying, "The mackerel are bound west, and we must work west with them." These first-comers are usually followed by a second school of better size and quality. I have often seen numbers of young mackerel, of three to four inches in length, left in shallow pools upon the flats by the tide in midsummer.

In the midst of a "biting school" no sport could be more exciting or satisfying. At such times the mackerel resemble famished wolves, snapping and crowding for the bait, rather than harmless fishes. This unexampled voracity makes them an easy prey, and they are taken as fast as the line can be thrown over. It not unfrequently happens that the school will either sink or suddenly refuse the bait, even while swarming about the sides of the vessels. This is vexatious, but there is no help for it. The fleet must lie idle until the capricious or overfed fish is hungry.

Mackerel swim in deep water, and are brought to the surface by casting over quantities of ground bait. If they happen to be on the surface in a storm, at the first peal of thunder they will sink to the bottom. The movements of the fish in the water are like a gleam of light, and it dies hard when out of it. The mackerel was in great abundance when New England was first visited.

In the confusion naturally incident to accounts of early discoveries on our coast of New England, it is pleasant to find one vantage-ground from which you can not be dislodged. In this respect Pemaquid stands almost alone. It has never been called by any other name. Possibly it may have embraced either more or less of the surrounding territory or adjacent waters than at present; still there is eminent satisfaction in standing at Pemaquid on impregnable ground.