Out of Our Past

Lester Barter’s Fish Stories

Wed, 06/20/2018 - 7:15am

Lester Barter of Boothbay Harbor, who was born in 1906 and died in 2003, did just about everything a man could do in 1900s Boothbay—maybe twice as much: moving houses, building houses, cutting ice, enlisting twice in World War II, digging clams, fishing, lobsterfishing, hunting, golfing, writing poetry, plumbing, working on the roads, and working in the shipyards, namely Reed's, Hodgdons, Goudys, and Rices. He was in veteran, fraternal, and hunting and fishing organizations. His occupations and pastimes mirrored the century here.

Schooner and Dory Seining

If you grew up in a seafaring and fishing family, as Lester did, it was expected you would go fishing too. His father Miles first went fishing to the Grand Banks when he was seven. His Uncle George, being smaller and shorter, didn't go until he was nine. Miles and George sailed with Captain John Seavey, George serving as his "right-hand man." Lester wanted to follow in their footsteps and go to sea with Capt. John, Boothbay's great mackerel killer.

In 1915, when Lester was nine, he asked Capt. John if he could go with him. Capt. John answered, "You can go, but you got to work and take a top bunk. On top of that, you've got to take the hot bunk." The galley pipe ran over a top bunk, often making it uncomfortably hot. Lester went home to pack, filled with pride and excitement. His Aunt Mary noticed the commotion and asked what he was up to. When Lester told her he was going fishing, Mary said indignantly, "Go with those men—I don't think!" Lester appealed to his father, but Miles said Mary was acting as a mother toward him and she had to be respected. That huge fishery was nearing its end. Lester might have been the last Boothbay nine-year-old boy to beg to go to sea on a mackerel schooner.

Clamming

Lester's local saltwater activities took multiple forms. During World War I he started digging clams for Perce Greenleaf earning 15 cents a bushel. The clams were shipped from the steamer Virginia wharf, now the Fishermans Wharf area. In the 1930s he dug clams for 30 cents a bushel for Lyman Merry who took over the old Neptune sardine plant (now Brown Brothers) which he had supervised. Lyman was canning clams there, but the 1930s was about the last of it. Lyman had a half barrel with a hoop in it marking the bushel measure. Men would pour their 40 to 55 pounds of clams in up to the mark. Lester said, "I can still see Emerson Brewer pushing his clams out from the middle up to the hoop." Lyman wasn't fooled and he would gently ask Emerson to pour a little more in.

Handlining

One day in the 1930s Lester and Roland Pinkham decided to go fishing to lay in a supply for themselves. They owned a little lobster boat together and headed for favored Tag Shoal to fish south of Damariscove and Bantam Ledge.

They stopped off on the east side of Damariscove where old man John Wallace from Bristol lived. He had a floating fish trap on Damariscove, so Lester asked him if he had any herring for bait. Wallace was just about ready to bail the trap, so he was soon able to help them out. At one time Wallace built a sweet lobsterboat on Damariscove, so beautiful that Lester asked to borrow the molds but the island's barn burned before he could get them.

Lester and Roland found the shoal the old-fashioned way, using two lines of sight between defined landmarks that intersect when you're over the right place. One of the marks for the fishing spot was: take the ear on the southeast end of Hen (Heron) Island on Pemaquid Point; the other was take Seguin on Morse's Mountain (Georgetown). Once they got situated fishing, they pulled in pollock just as fast as they could get their hooks overboard, 12 to 16 pounders. They ended up with nearly half a ton of fish and figured they had to stop. Henry Greenleaf came out with a paying fishing party and anchored next to them but couldn't catch a thing. As Lester was leaving, he gave the rest of the fresh herring to Henry, and they started catching right away—the fish wouldn't touch a thing but fresh herring.

Preserving the Fish

After they got ashore in Boothbay Harbor, they set to work to cure the fish. They cut the heads off each to drain the blood, split them so they'd lay open in halves, and put them in barrels full of water to soak overnight. The next day they added salt in layers and left them for another couple days, planning on slack salted pollock, rather than using a salt pickle. They customarily built their flakes from lath or wire, though locally wire was suspect; Lester occasionally made a screened cage to keep the flies off and hung the fish threaded on sticks. But this time they laid all their spectacular catch out in the elements to dry. However, four or five bad days of weather followed—foggy and rainy with no sun, and no amount of trying to save the fish succeeded—they lost it all since it couldn't dry. Fishing is a gamble.

Thanks to Ralph Carter for helping me with the name and location of the fishing spot, Tag Shoal, also called Tag Ground.