Rolling with the Miss Maria

Just back from a cod fishing trip out to the St. Pierre Banks, aboard a 42’ fiberglass boat we’ll call the Miss Maria (name changed to protect any possible issues). Strangely enough, many people in town, baffled as to why a stranger would show up in such a small town in late fall and then proceed to ask around for fishing work, have come up with the theory that I’m an undercover cop. This is quite amusing to me, but despite my insistence that I’m no Mounty, a I think that several of the fishermen still don’t believe me. For this reason, I kept my camera and audio recorder tucked away for the whole of the trip. A shame, because my words won’t do any justice to portray the fishing scene I jumped into.

The skipper of the boat, Paul, had heard about me from the town rumor mill. He agreed to take me out for the next trip, as he was one guy short. At this point in the year, he was gillnetting for cod. The boat had remaining 17,000 pounds to catch. (Cod are managed on a quota system, with each licensed boat being granted the right to catch and sell a set number of pounds.) The marine weather had been notably foul as of late, and fishing had been at a standstill, but we’d cut loose from the docks the next decent weather window. Paul struck me instantly as a fair and kind-hearted guy, not all that much older in years than myself, but with a full family to support and a full lifetime of fishing experience.

The anticipated break in the weather came the very next night. Paul made the calls to his crew, all scattered in local outports on the southern Burin peninsula. They had an hour notice to pack and leave for a four day trip. One of the regular crew wasn’t around but his dad jumped at the chance for the fishing work. Paul had gotten good reports from relatives on the fishing grounds and was anxious to lay gear on the “numbers” (coordinates) they’d given him. Approaching the wharf in the dark, I could see a bustle around the boat. Several plant workers were manning the ice machine, loading the boat with 5 or so tons of ice shavings. The crew was rolling out of the shadows- sweatpants, and boots, cigarettes and a duffel. In no time we were off and out of the tiny harbor.

The confidence I’d gained at understanding the Newfoundland dialect quickly vanished as I tried in vain to talk with the crew. Tom, Kenny, Kenny, and John, and I made up the crew, and these boys communicated in animated growls. Their rough voices erupted from the darkness of the wheelhouse, loud but always friendly. I couldn’t make out more than an occasional word. The spirit was more of a reunion than of work, and during the 12-hour steam out to the fishing grounds, the boys proceeded to have a blast, simultaneously laughing, talking, and smoking. I only wished I could have taken more of a part in the conversation. Mostly I laughed along with them.

Once we’d arrived at Paul’s numbers, out went the gear. Bottom gillnetting is something I’d never seen before, but the process is very similar to other methods of fishing for salmon and halibut- it’s kind of a salmon (surface) driftnet/halibut longline hybrid. I should apologize in advance, as this description will bore any folks that fish and will likely still be confusingly vague for those who haven’t...

Gear is set off the stern. Out go the buoys and line. Then a rubber sack filled with rocks- an anchor substitute- go out, followed closely by the net. Each grid of the net measured six and a half inches, stretched diagonally. Fish, unable to see the thin translucent net, swim into it, and are tangled. Each net is roughly 100 yards long, and fishes the bottom 2 fathoms of the water column. Small floating corks are fixed to the top edge of the net. On average, ten nets are linked to make a fleet, although this can vary. The Miss Maria fished four fleets, and we set in around 30 fathoms of water. The other end of the fleet wraps up with another bag of stones, riser line and a buoy. Time to set the next fleet.

After making four sets, we grabbed a quick bite in the galley and proceeded to head back to the first fleet. Gear was run through a hauler mounted near the starboard rail, and was then pulled toward the stern and carefully restacked for the next set, after all fish were picked from the net. Paul ran the hauler, while two of the crew picked fish and two of the crew stacked the net. I also picked fish, but primarily stationed myself at the gutting table. All fish needed to be gutted and packed below deck in ice.

Thus began what turned out to be a 35-hour marathon of fairly continuous working of the gear. Night’s curtains had lifted about when the first gear was set, and picking and resetting saw day slide back into night, and the night ebbed back into day. Paul had put us on the fish from the first set, and up came the cod. This was very surprising to me, as over the course of my life I’ve been told countless stories about the complete collapse of the northern codfish. Here were big cod-in abundance- showing up in the net. Surprise!

Up came pulses of cod, many nearly four feet long and pushing 40 pounds. Although most of the catch was cod, a good many haddock and pollock also came aboard, along with the occasional hake, monkfish, wolfish, sculpin, whelk, and rock. The rocks were released unharmed. One wolfish, named for their large jaws and fang-like front teeth, latched on to the bottom of my rain bibs and absolutely refused to let go for several minutes. The crew found it hilarious that the strange kid from away was hopping around with a stubborn fangy fish hanging on to his leg.

The rest of the crew continued to give every appearance of having one hell of a good time. Hours wore on and it seemed like they had just two modes: work or smoke. At every moment they weren’t on deck working the gear, they were hand rolling smokes and inhaling them at impressive speed. Tom, one of the Kennys, and John would make normal chain smokers look like timid first-timers. Food and rest were luxuries better left for shore, but smokes were critical to the success of the trip.

Somewhere there in the middle, Paul explained that they usually take short breaks between hauling fleets for (silly) things like grub or a nap, the combination of good fishing and a predictions for a nasty blow made him want to try to get done and out before the weather became too lousy to fish. Daybreak of the second day saw a building sea and lots of fresh wind. “She rolls,” is what Paul had told me about the boat before we left the wharf, “but she’s never not come back.”

On came the fish, up came the weather. Radio chatter said it was blowing up to a crisp 45 knots. Even starting with a calm sea, wind like this can make a mess of things fast. Roll she did. There aren’t too many jobs where you get paid to work with a honed filet knife while riding a bucking bronco. We had our quota’s worth of cod, plus a couple thousand pounds of haddock, just about the time when Paul confessed it was getting a little to sloppy to be hauling gear. I agreed. It was hard enough to stay fixed to the deck.

There we have it. A few hours of cleanup and icing down the fish and the boys were back at their preferred mode. Smiles, laughs, and unintelligible rough exclamations all around. We’d managed to catch the quota and had avoided the bulk of a nasty blow, condensing a four day trip into two. I rolled into a bunk for a couple of hours of rest, surprised but thankful to discover that a seatbelt had been installed into the bunk. This device might seem out of place, but at this moment it was the difference between a little sleep and a one-way trip to the galley floor.

We steamed back towards Fortune- diverging at one point to trade an ailing scallop dragger a few gallons of hydraulic oil for scallops- and made it safely back to the harbor. The crew drifted away into the dark, as suddenly as they’d appeared only a couple of days before, to resume their land lives. They’d likely remain on call for other fishing work, would cut firewood for winter, and would help with their kids’ youth hockey teams. Lives on land and water were probably entirely different for these guys. I could now see why fishing, although work, was also a reunion of old friends, an extreme (and financially practical) version of a night out with the boys (this is the gender-neutral use of "boys", as a woman could also be one of the boys in this sense). Go out, roll around, catch some fish with the boys, roll on home with money to support the family. Although I’m only basing it on this one trip, I think this may speak to life in many outports of Newfoundland.