The Fishing Industry of Chesapeake Bay
THE dweller in the city who sits down at a well-ordered table to enjoy broiled shad or bluefish in the early spring has but little knowledge of the trouble and patience expended by some "toiler at the nets" to furnish him with these delicacies of the season. The cook or housewife who does the marketing has a clearer conception of the amount of work involved in providing the markets with thousands of fish, but the majority of city people know nothing of the habits or homes of these fish, or of the various methods of catching them, while those who live far inland, whether in city or country, understand but little of the great fishing industry that is carried on all along our coasts.
Most of the fish supplied to the great cities in spring and early summer are shipped from Norfolk or Old Point Comfort, and when one realizes that the government pier at the latter place is the largest on the Atlantic coast, and furnishes accommodations for the landing of seven large steamers at one time, it is not difficult to imagine the possibilities of such a shipping port adjacent to important fishing grounds like those of Chesapeake Bay, Hampton Roads, and the Atlantic Ocean off Hatteras in the vicinity of the Gulf Stream. When one remembers further that these vessels give direct and rapid transportation to Richmond, Baltimore, Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and other cities, he cannot deny the commercial importance of the fishing industry of the Chesapeake.
Early in March the bluefish fleet starts out from New York -- from thirty-two to fifty schooners or "smacks," of from twenty-five to one hundred tons burden. A few, more hardy or daring than the rest, lead the way. They stop at Old Point to try the temperature of the water, for bluefish cannot live in water colder than forty-eight degrees, Fahrenheit, and then after taking on ice and twenty or thirty thousand menhaden or "bunkers" for bait, the smacks proceed to cruise off Hatteras.
Fortunate indeed is the skipper who immediately finds a warm spot where the fish will bite, for the first bluefish in New York markets fetch a dollar apiece, and an expert fisherman has been known to catch a thousand six-pound fish in seven hours, a good average catch being three hundred in five hours. When a warm spot is found from fifty to a hundred feet in diameter and the fish are seen to be plentiful, the dories, of which every smack carries seven or eight, are sent out, each manned by two men. Some bunkers are thrown into the bait mill and ground into small pieces. These the men throw into the water, making a greasy place called a "slick," and tempting the fish within reach of the hooks which are baited with larger pieces of bunker. As soon as a fish fastens himself to a hook, the fisherman, by a dexterous twist of the wrist, throws the line over an unhooker (an arrangement like a boot-jack fastened to the seat), and the fish falls into the beat. The captain of the smack, who is watching his dories through a glass, sends a boat to relieve them of their loads so that the busy fishers need not stop work. The fish are immediately dressed and stored with shaved ice in boxes prepared for them in the lower hold. When three or four thousand are obtained, the smack weighs anchor and sails for Norfolk or Old Point where the fish are repacked in barrels and shipped to their destination by fast freight, thus avoiding the long sail to New York. The wholesale price of bluefish varies from four to ten cents a pound according to season and abundance.
The bluefish travel north as the warm weather approaches, at the rate of about three miles a day, and the smacks follow them to the
New England coast, fishing along the way and shipping from the nearest port. They return with the fish in the fall, the season ending about the middle of December. Many of the bluefish on their way north detect fresh water between Cape Henry and Cape Charles, and follow their noses, so to speak, into Chesapeake Bay and Hampton Roads, where they are caught with other fish in the pounds or weirs that everywhere extend out from the shores.
The pattern of the Chesapeake Bay pound is shown in the accompanying cut. The fish are directed into the "bays" by the long straight hedging, and when once in the pound are unable to get out. The pound is enclosed by a net from thirty to fifty feet in diameter. The weirs are "fished" between two and three o'clock in the morning by colored men in oilskins who go out with lanterns to the various pounds, and after slacking up the lines, pull up the net which has a rope fastened to its bottom passing over kringles at the base of each post. They then bail out the fish, finding sometimes much variety though fish usually run in "schools," and there is likely to be a large number of one sort. A pound yields upwards of fifty barrels a day and in March and April, shad are very abundant. These well-known and highly-esteemed fish bring, at the be-
ginning of the season, a dollar and a half a pair but the price soon falls to forty-five cents, the roe shad remaining twice as high as the buck. Trout, croakers, and the little menhaden, or bunkers, are also abundant throughout the season, while herring, Spanish mackerel, rock, flounder, drum, and sheepshead also come to the nets. Chesapeake Bay is especially noted for hog-fish and spots, both of which are small fish from eight to ten inches in length and of very delicate flavor. They bring, in the home market, from fifty to seventy-five cents a dozen. The rare and delicious Florida fish, the pompano, is sometimes caught in July, and is the highest-priced fish on the peninsula, always bringing twenty-five cents a pound. Occasionally a sturgeon appears in the nets -- a great fellow five or six feet long and weighing three or four hundred pounds. A mallet is usually carried in the boat for such emergencies and is used to stun the big fish so that he will not break the net. Huge turtles also find their way into the pounds and may be seen lying on their backs on the wharf ready for shipment with the address pained on the shell on the under side of the body. When the fish are brought ashore from the pounds they are sorted and strung together in bunches with white-oak withes, and are then loaded on
wagons to be sold at daylight in the near-by towns. Or they are taken by water directly from the pound to Old Point and there packed in ice to be shipped by the evening boats, from fifty to five hundred barrels being sent from that point daily during the season.
Menhaden are sometimes caught in a purse net. A school of three or four hundred thousand having been sighted -- and a pretty sight they are as they ruffle the water with their silver fins -- the fishing sloop sends out two boats with the net, one half in each boat. Beginning with sterns together, they gradually row apart, letting the net out, grounding it by means of a "tom-weight," and surrounding the fish. The men then purse up the net and make it fast to the side of the sloop into which the fish are dipped from the net. They are used in large quantities in the manufacture of fish oil. In the factories, several of which are to be found on the Chesapeake, the menhaden are first boiled in large vats and then subjected to the pressure of an hydraulic press, the oil obtained, which is chiefly used in tanneries, being refined by exposure to the heat of the sun. A thousand fish produce on an average two gallons of oil worth about thirty cents a gallon. The refuse after being boiled down to ten per cent moisture, is used as a fertilizer, selling for from twenty to thirty-five dollars a ton.
Besides the pounds and the purse nets, gill nets are sometimes used for catching fish for market. These are made of fine twine and with fine meshes. When they are set straight, at right angles to the shore, the fish swim against them and find that they can then go neither forward nor backward, being caught by the gills in a net too fine to let their bodies through. They are taken off by the fishermen in boats. The "jumping mullet" is often caught at night by building a fire of lightwood in the bow of a boat into which the fish jump, being attracted by the light. Hook-and-line fishing with crab meat for bait, is carried on to a large extent by those colored people who own canoes and are not employed by the owners of pounds or purse nets. Fishing in summer and oystering in winter furnish a means of livelihood to a large portion of the colored people living in the vicinity of Hampton Roads, several of whom own fish markets or wagons.