FISHING

Fishing was always an important industry on Prince Edward Island and in the Grand River area. The fishermen harvested lobster, groundfish, smelts, eels and shellfish from the water around the shores of the area and in the river itself.

Lobster fishing was perhaps one of the most important types. The earliest fishermen rowed out to the grounds in late April or early May, after the ice went

out to run their lines. The season ran to early July, depending on the supply of lobsters.

The boats and traps were not owned by the fishermen themselves, but by the packers who would supply the gear in return for the lobsters that were caught. The fishermen depended greatly on the packers who, since they did supply every- thing, could force the fishermen to accept a low price. It is only in relatively recent years that the fishermen have begun to own their own gear but they still depend on a packer to market their product. John Tassell, Little Pond, remembers when

the only thing you had to supply to fish was your bed, and even that went in a bunkhouse supplied by the packer.

There is no doubt that the life of a fisherman involved hard work. Boys often

left school at age ten or eleven to go fishing. if they didn’t stay in the bunkhouse next to the shore, they often had to get up as early as two or three in the morning

to walk to the shore. They rowed or sailed their small boat out and then hauled the gear by hand.

The lobsters were originally sold by count, not weight. it was said they took everything but the spawn lobsters as regulations were not as tight then. If some dead lobsters were present for the count, fishermen often got a break from at least one smackman. Several fishermen recalled John G. Banks, Annandale, changing his rhythm to “eighteen, nineteen, twenty, and a dead one, pity too, twenty three This actually gave credit for the dead one and one extra one.

Later on the lobsters were sold by weight and measured with a gauge to comply with size regulations. The earliest gauges were made simply by cutting a piece of lath nine and one half inches long. Jim Roberston, Annandale, was one fisherman who nearly suffered when a few of the young men shortened his gauge by cutting a half an inch off the end on the very day the fisheries officer visited the wharf. The officer didn’t press charges when persuaded that Mr. Robertson was the victim of a prank. The fine would likely have been quite high. James Norton‘s diary entry on June 26, 1889 records that an unnamed fisherman was fined fifty dollars for having five lobsters one quarter of an inch less than nine and a half inches long — taking what was no doubt his entire season’s pay.

The fishermen were paid at the end of the season by the packer. His expenses of the season were deducted from this and intact, sometimes were greater than the amount due him. The lbbsters were sold for 21/20? a pound, and if the fisher- man had a helper, the helper was also paid out qf the season’s profits.

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