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Lobster boats are in the water at the dock in Toney River.

Lobster boats are in the water at the dock in Toney River.

Since man first went out in his own fishing boat, he has had a fisherman’s helper.

When I first went lobster fishing, I didn’t know a thing about it. I had to learn everything from scratch.

The only thing that a person had to have is the love of the sea. A person had to learn all about fishing from his boss as you went about your daily work. You had to do what you were supposed to do in all areas of peaceful and dangerous times in a boat, weather-wise. A person learned very, very fast. For example, always watch those traps and rope when you were pushing them off the boat and back into the water.

Being out in a boat was tranquil, peaceful, beautiful and exciting. But, there were times when everyone had to fight through rogue waves, high seas and very high winds. Even with these terrible weather days there was still something special about being out there. A person had to give Mother Nature a lot of respect.

Most times, a fisherman would hire his helper through the winter months or in the early spring. Once the fisherman had a good or great helper hired, he would keep him for as long as he wanted to stay or until he bought his own fishing gear.

A lobster fisherman’s helper first had to learn about his boat that he was going to work in. In my case, I had to learn about the boat’s “thwart,” which is basically a wide board that goes across the bow (forward end of a boat) to hold each side of the boat from caving in because of the sea’s waves hitting the sides all the time. I had to step over it each and every time I had to push the traps into the water while making sure that the rope didn’t get caught under the thwart. The rest was self-taught, like the “tiller”, which is used to steer your boat in all directions (port – left, starboard – right or straight). It was a long hard piece of wood that ropes were attached to. These ropes went back to the rudder, which was a large piece of wood or metal under the stern (back end of a boat or ship) below the water, used to direct your boat.

Some helpers even went with their fisherman to help him get his boat ready for the season, help with fixing the traps, mending the rope and painting the buoys. Also, the helper even went with him to help gather “crazy rock.” This crazy rock was to place in your old wooden traps to help weigh down your traps so they would sink to the bottom of the ocean floor. These rocks had to be the right size, shape (not too round) and weight, not too heavy. These rocks were gathered along the shoreline and placed in piles until a person could gather them up, usually right away.

A long time ago, most boats, if not all, were tethered up on land close to the water just far enough away to protect them from the sea and winter’s ice. They were hung up on barrels, and boards of wood were placed between the barrels and the boat to keep them level. All fluid and water was drained out of the boat to keep things from freezing up through the winter with anti-freeze placed in the engine. Next, a wood frame was made and placed over the opening of the boat. After this, a thick tarp was placed over the frame and tightened down with ropes. This protected a person’s boat from the winter’s rains, ice and snow.

My story starts with two great fishermen – David “Bergie” Davis and Art “Fearless” Ferguson. When the spring came, I would be called to go back to work with my fisherman. The boat had to be cleaned, scraped of old paint and new paint put on. There were two kinds of paint that had to be used. One for the top of the boat that was out of the water and one for the bottom of the boat that was under the water. The engine was drained of anti-freeze, and gas, fluid, oils and water was added. The engine was started and made sure all was right. Gear and packing boxes were all checked and readied. Everything had to be made ready for the water and all leaks (wooden boat) had to be sealed. The steel shaft had to be checked along with the propeller and rudder to make sure the boat had speed and would turn alright.

With all this done, checked and double checked, you were now ready to launch the boat. People would get on each side of the boat. Tipping the boat back and forth, the boards and barrels would be taken away. Rollers or pieces of rounded wood would be placed at the back of the boat toward the water’s edge. Then the boat would be slowly slid down these rollers, replacing them as needed until the boat slipped into the water. The fisherman and his helper would jump onto the boat, start the motor, push the boat further out to deeper water, take in all rope lines and give the boat a test run to make sure everything was in working order. After all this, we would head for Pictou Island within the next few days to get all the traps and rope out of the trap house, and also to clean up and air out our fisherman’s shack where we would be living for the next two months.

In the good old days, a trap was made of wood with some slab flat rock at the bottom. The wooden traps would dry out over the winter and until the wood would get water logged, you needed crazy rock in them. When you took each trap out of the trap house, a person had to check the trap for broken wooden lathes, string heads where the lobsters entered the trap, the rope in the back of the trap, the bait strings and other things because all these had to be fixed so the lobsters could not get out.

At first, these bait strings were two pieces of twine tied loosely together at the top and bottom of the trap with a piece of rubber to pull them together when a piece of fish (herring or mackerel) was placed in the middle. Later on, small spikes or nails were put through the bottom of the trap and a piece of twine and a rubber toggle held the bait on the spike. Next came bait trays, cups or fish nets that had rubber bands at each end to keep the bait in them.

Now all the fisherman’s rope (hemp material that was very hard on the hands) had to be checked. If places were weak or worn, they had to be cut and spliced. These coiled rope would hold six to 10 traps placed at equal distances between each other, called a “dump” or fishing lines. Many fishermen had up to 50 dumps. All distances of these traps were measured in out stretched arm lengths about five or six times; about a fathom, or a nautical measure of about six feet, long.

After this, all buoys had to be painted. One buoy would be tied to each end of fishing line or dump so a person could find where their traps were during the season. Each fisherman had his own colours arranged in his own patron.

When these buoys were floating in the water, you needed a special tool to grab the buoy and get it into the boat. This was called a boat hook, which would grab the rope under the buoy so you could get it into the boat and place the rope around the drum head. You would then pick your traps clean and take out the lobsters and re-bait them and then place them back into the water. The snood (a small piece of rope from your trap to your rope line) had to be checked each time because a loose or torn snood meant losing your trap. Traps could not be replaced because each fishermen was given a certain number of tags, which had to be nailed to your trap. The only way a tag might be replaced was after a major storm and you could prove to the fisheries officer that you lost some traps.

Just before the season started, a fisherman (and now fisherwoman) would order his or her bait for all the trays from the company they were going to sell their lobsters to. The day before the official opening of the lobster season, a person would put as many traps on their boat as they could so they would be ready to go the next day. A horn was blown to let you know that you now could go out to sea and place or set your traps wherever you wanted or could. You would do this several times until all your traps were of the wharf and into the water. In my first days of fishing, it would a couple of days from dawn until late in the afternoon to get all the traps finished because some fishermen had 500 to 900 traps. Today, a fisherperson is only allowed to have 250 traps and each trap must have escape doors or openings in them so the smaller or under size lobsters can get out.

During my lobster fishing years, most were spent on Pictou Island. Fishermen from away would stay on the island from Sunday evening until Saturday afternoon when they would head home to the mainland for a day off. All week on the island, you would have your meals at the cook house where all fishermen would gather to eat breakfast and supper. A light lunch was served for anyone at around 8-8:30 p.m.  The cooks also made up lunch cans for out in the boat during the day. In those days, these meals were part of the helper’s pay. Each meal was approximately $1.50 to $2.50.

Two of the greatest ladies that a person ever wanted to know and like worked at our cook house. They were Lorraine MacMillan and Janet Rankin. They made the best meals you could ever eat, along with their great baked items. These two ladies worked from very early morning to very late at night.

We stayed in our fisherman’s shanty, every fisherman had one. Just a small closed in shack that had an oil stove, few had a wood stove, one or two sets of bunk beds, a table in one corner with two old chairs to sit and play cards, and a small table in the other corner with a wash basin and towels on it to clean up. A five-gallon jug of water was under this table. An old kettle always sat on the stove. Light came from candles or a kerosene lamp. Close to the stove was a small clothes line where a person would hang your big woolen mitts to dry for the next day. On the back of you shanty door, you could hang your rubber oil cloths to dry for the next morning. One of my best friends, now my brother-in-law, Harold “Mackie” Rice stayed in the shanty next to us. He fished for Punch Patterson.

Here is the start of a day in the life of a fisherman’s helper, each and every day for a two-month season. Wake up time would be around 3 a.m. Wash up, get dressed and head to the cook house for breakfast. After you ate, you would pick up your lunch cans and head for your boat. There were no cabins on the boats then like there are now. You would go to the boat’s hand pump, prime the pump with some salt water from the ocean to get it started and then pump all the water out of the bottom of the boat that got in overnight from waves or rain. Today, boats have two or three electric pumps to keep all the water out. While you were pumping out the boat, your boss would come aboard and check the oil in the engine. Next, the helper would start to take the rope lines from the wharf, where it was safely tied for the night, starting with the spring line (a small rope tied from your boat to another person’s boat), the back stern line was next and then the front bow line. Your fisherman would pull in the stern line while the helper was carrying and coiling up the bow line rope to get back onto the boat. Making sure all your rope lines were securely tied in the boat, the boss went out of the wharf’s entrance. If this rope was not tied down right it could let go, fall into the water and get caught up in the boat’s propeller, which would stop the boat right away and you could drift away with the tide right into the land or rock reefs.

You would them haul up all the fenders from the outside of the boat. Today these fenders are long rubber tubes with air in them, some are solid. These new kinds of fenders also do not mark up the boat.

Now you would make sure your bait crates were placed in the middle of the boat near the stern. Bait crates carried the salt herring fish. Next, you placed the empty crates beside them where you would place the caught lobsters. In those days you would place all the lobsters together in one crate; when filled, tie the lid down and get another empty crate and start all over again. The lobsters were not rubber banded until they were weighed at the wharf. Today the boats have water-cooled containers where even air is blown in to keep the lobsters fresh. Also, lobsters are rubber banded before placed in these tanks and they are also separated. The big markets go in one side while the small canners go into the other side. All these lobsters are measured to the right size by law by a lobster scale. A scale is a small piece of metal with slots in it on each side, one for small and one for big. If a female lobster has eggs on its bottom and you have them in your boat, a fisherman could lose his licence. These female lobsters must be placed back into the water very gently so they do not lose any eggs for the future of lobster fishing.

Some fishermen had a few very big traps that were very heavy and it took both fishermen to haul into the boat to pick the very large lobsters out of. On some occasions, you could get a giant of a lobster in your trap like one Art Ferguson caught when I worked for him. Its shell is now housed at the Northumberland Fisheries Museum in Pictou. The lobster weighed in around 25 pounds and it took both of us to carry it and place it in its own crate. In those days, there were no rubber bands to put around the big lobster’s claws. We used small wooden pegs to place in the joints of the claws so it could not open.

These rubber bands and pegs are placed over the claws for two very good reasons. First, so a person could handle them and not get their hands or fingers caught or pinched by the lobster, as they could crush or break bones. Secondly, a lobster would crush other lobsters and kill them.

When you were at your fishing grounds, the helper would grab his boat hook and lean over the side of the boat to hook the rope on your fisherman’s coloured buoy.

All traps were picked clean, rebaited and put back into the water for the next day’s fishing. While doing this, about every five trap lines or so, a helper had to go and pump the water out of the boat again because the water would come in from the waves, rope and traps or just rain.

At other times, you had to pick up or sweep up the “green slime” as we called it. It was very wet seaweed that also carried dirt on it. When it fell on the floor of the boat it was very slippery and it became a danger.

With the traps all hauled, you would head for shore. While heading home, the helper would put everything back where it belonged, clean up the boat’s mess, pump out the boat again, tie all the fender guards on again and get the rope lines ready to tie the boat to dock for the night. Now you would get your lobsters put in separated crates so they could be weighed when you got to your buyers. These buyers’ boats were called smack boats (a fishing boat with weight scales in them with extra bait). With the weighing done, you would pick up new bait and empty crates for tomorrow’s catch.

After a little sleep, you would go to supper. After supper, we would go outside and sit down for a little while and then the helper went back to work again, down to the boat, fill it up with gas from two five-gallon jerry cans.

You would take the empty jerry cans up to your shanty where there was two 45-gallon of gas. You would fill both cans and carry them back to the boat, placing then in the stern area. These cans had to be filled at all times just in case you might need more gas if it was a long fishing day.

Today, a great number of things have changed. First off, all the boats have changed from wooden to fiberglass making them stronger and sealed for leaks. The only thing that could happen is, if your fiberglass boat got a hole in it, this would cause your boat to sink especially if your electric pumps failed. If you had a hole punched in a wooden boat, it would only sink to the top of your boat but your boat would still float on the surface of the water. Also, there are no longer boats with hand pumps on them, they are all electric pumps now. Most boats have two or three pumps on them.

Gas is no longer carried in jerry cans and then put into a boat through a large funnel; you just pull up to the wharf where there is a gas tank and pump it into your tank like you were filling up your car at a gas station.

Lobsters are banded and placed into a large water tank that keeps them cool and alive for better quality. No more empty crates with unbanded lobsters any more. Bait comes frozen now or fresh to make it easier to handle instead of the old salted herring, few still use these. Fisherpeople now have bait holders instead of strings with rubber toggles. You can fill these bait holders when you are sailing to your fishing grounds.

The biggest change now is that all boats have cabins on them where you can sail over to your fishing grounds out of nature elements. Some cabins have tables, seats, bunks and a toilet in them (a long way from the water bucket), while others have heat in them to help keep a person warm until you start fishing. The motors are stronger, faster and more powerful.

Another difference is that you or your partner makes your lunch cans because there is no longer any cook houses.

Most other things are still the same but the one thing that will never change is the peace, tranquility, love of the sea and those early morning sunrises, some that others will never see.

Submitted by Vincent Joyce, a former long-time fisherman’s helper.

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