The shad boats were all built out of juniper wood. There wasn't any glue or fiberglass. They didn't have it. That boat was built when the first Model A Fords came out, 1928. 1927 was the last time they made the Model T's. 1928 they made a big advance from the Model T's to the Model A Ford. That boat was right back there then. They were all built out of juniper, no plastics and no glue involved. Now they're all plastic and fiberglass and glue.
Did you use nails or pegs or. . . ?
No, copper nails were used. There weren't anchor pads back then. A lot of times they burrowed them on the inside, kind of a cut type nail, square like. They'd drive it through the wood and drop a washer. They called it 'burrow' in those days. They'd drop a burrow on top of it and have somebody to hold on the outside of the fastener (the nail) and hold a piece of shaft up against it good and tight. The person on the inside flipped it right off above the burrow and started tapping it and it tightened it right up. They had a washer like a washer on the inside and the nail head on the outside.
I was thirteen about the first time I ever went out in one of them. Of course, when I was thirteen that was 1934 probably. On Saturdays I'd help the fishermen set their nets and take them up and things like that.
I never did build one of those boats, but the man who raised me, that was his profession. He was a fisherman and boat builder and I helped him some. He could build one of those boats by himself, probably in thirty days. A very skillful man, a craftsman--he was really a master craftsman.
What was it like to go fishing in a shad boat? I understand you had poles.
We had what we called stakes to hold our nets in position. Is that what you are referring to?
No, to move the boat.
In the beginning, the boat ahead of that boat was a dead-rise shad boat. The boat ahead of that boat is a round-bottom shad boat and the two intermingled. The dead-rise shad boat came in about 1900. The round-bottom shad boat had started with an Indian canoe. They put two logs together and that made a kind of round bottom boat. Then finally, they got to where they were building them out of boards and they'd go to the woods and cut the timber and stumps. They'd dig down under them and the stumps reached way out and they would make round timbers out of them. This type boat, like I say, was used for the same thing as the round-bottom boat. The round bottom shad boat and the dead-rise shad boat, you might say they were half brother and sister. One has just as much right as the other to be called a shad boat. I've seen a whole lot more shad in the dead-rise. Of course I came along in the dead-rise time.
Can you tell me about staking the nets?
Most people that fished in the Sound started at the shore and went about one-third of the way across the Sound and rows got real close together. People in the community way back, started to use pound nets (that's what I'm referring to) that came in, probably about 1870 or somewhere about that time. Before that time it was seines, all seines. They pulled the nets in with oxen on a windlass. They could walk around and around and pull the net in. It took a lot of people to operate it. That's the type of fishing they did before the pound net. But when they started doing pound nets, people who owned this property along the shoreline started putting pound nets out. Each homestead owner owned their own pound nets and they got to where they actually thought they owned the Sound--the water and the rights to it. I expect they even stood up in court and. . . .
People did come in when it got really profitable and they started getting tighter and tighter until one row to another row might not have been over 300 yards--or even less than that. Of course their property might not have been even 300 yards wide either.
In the beginning with sailboats it was hard to get shad to northern markets. There weren't any rails to the market in Elizabeth City, NC, which was the trade center for northeastern North Carolina. Once they got rail tracks in the 1800's, then they could ship fish north to Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. But if they had to take them on the sailboat, which the fishermen were doing at first, they'd get up the Sound and halfway between here and Elizabeth City, it [the Sound] got calm. They had ice on the fish but they might have stayed that way a day or two and eventually the ice melted off and no doubt they lost a lot of fish.
How many fish could you get in those pound nets?
Well from none to tons. I've heard the older people talk about getting them so thick in the net it looked like you could throw down a board and walk on it. But that was
{What do they get for them now?}
They're not a very popular fish now. You can't hardly sell the roe now. But that was the most popular fish there was a few years ago. The older people, if they went out and cleared $300 in a season, they could live a whole year on it and have a big family. They owned their home, had a garden and little fields, and live a whole year on $300. That money wouldn't last you three days now.
{Look at the price of fish in the markets now. You pay $14.00/lb.}
Yes, but you can't give the shad away, though. It looks like it would come back thick, but pollution in the water done more damage.
{Is it an oily fish? I've never eaten shad.}
It's North Atlantic Ocean white shad. It's a very delicious fish. They're bony, but they run about four pounds a piece to roe shad and if you know how to eat them--the bones doesn't bother anybody that knows how. But if you go in and stir it all up, you're going to get a lot of bones. We caught one out here in a. . . . You know shad goes up and down the coast and ninety some percent comes back to where it was hatched. They come back to the same place. Florida's got one--the Florida shad--but they all go back in the ocean. Of course, very few of the Florida shad survives spawning the first time. Very
I remember shad roe. Is shad more productive to take the roe?
And just to sell the roe? That's what's been happening for quite a few years now. Right at the first part of the season, there's still a slight market for the meat, right at the
beginning of the season. The season begins about the first of February or the last of January. That's the shad season and there's still a demand for the meat if there's not too much of it. If there's too much of it, it just sinks the market right quick. But the roe has hung on now for quite a few years. You can get more for the roe than the fish.
{What do they do with the roe?}
You've never eaten fish roe?
{No.}
Never have? It's a delicacy, shad roe.
Like caviar.
I'll show you a picture in awhile of a sturgeon we caught that had 110 lbs of roe in it.
{I know that caviar comes from a sturgeon and there's black roe and red roe, but. . . .}
Do you eat fish at all? Do you eat flounder?
{I love flounder.}
That's what we catch in the fall of the year--flounder.
{There's a lot of flounder out here in the Sound, no?}
Well you go out fishing and you don't catch them on a hook.
{You catch them with a spear, right?}
Not on this side of the Sound. On the other side of the Sound, they do go out like that. I never have but I know people who have. I've caught tons in pound nets. We took
4500 pounds out of one net in one day. I had about ten nets. But 4500 pounds in one day out of one net--Margaret, my wife, and myself--that's heavy when you pull it. We made two trips that day.
{Did your children get interested in your business?}
No, I steered my son clear of pound netting. It's such hard work and I didn't take him out much with me either. Once in a while I'd take him with me. I didn't encourage him at all. He's an accountant in Manteo now. He has his office in downtown Manteo. He's been in business a long time. He's sixty years old.
{You look sixty yourself. You look pretty good for eighty. I'll tell you, you don't look eighty years old.}
I need to shave. I knocked two teeth out with a chicken bone and I have both of them with temporary things in there until he makes a cap.
The shad season, how long does it go?
The shad season? Now gill nets and pound nets are two different things. You catch quite a few shad in January with gill nets, but the water is still so cold and the shad won't trace the leads to get in the crib in the pound nets until the water temperature gets up. And they won't come in that many until the water temperature gets up to a certain temperature.
We used to set our pound nets, but we don't do it any more for shad. Nobody does for shad because there's no sale. It costs a lot of money now to operate and if you can't make good money out of it. . . . I'll show you some pictures so you'll have better understanding.
Do you have more photographs? What Marguerite has been doing is loaning me photographs to take back to the University to make copies. I've been bringing them back, returning them. If that is possible, that would be great. I'll even bring you an extra set.
I can let you have some. I have some special pictures I'd hate to lose.
We were talking about the seasons--the pound season. We'd actually set our nets the first or middle of February. It would run out about the tenth of May. We'd start getting ready after Christmas--treating our nets and sticking stakes. . . . You're not bothered with salt water worms if the fresh water will come in the area every so often. We tarred our . . . and the mixture would burn the heck out of you.
We caught 4000 shad one day and we shipped 125 boxes at 31 cents. . . . We shipped them and then we'd hear from some of them. The ones we shipped that we hadn't heard from, we'd call them up collect and they wouldn't accept the call! We had to call at our own expense. It took what they sold to pay the freight. They were beautiful shad. . . .
How much did you get for the roe?
I never did sell them that way. I always sold the whole works. I have a little fish market just south of here. They fish with gill nets in the spring of the year and they've been selling the roe, but he told us sometime back that he can hardly sell the roe now. The people have gone away that likes it.
At the end of the season, what did you do to prepare for the next year?
You take up your pound nets and it could take two weeks or sometimes a month to get them mended back--to replace the lines that were worn. Then we . . . them. Now they're made out of different stuff. They were made out of cotton years ago and you had to treat them. You had to store them where they wouldn't get moisture on them. You kept them in the house until the fall. You sometimes use the same nets in the fall. In some cases you just use the same nets in the spring where you just left them in the house until next year. Since they've got this synthetic nylon, it works entirely different--it's much stronger. All you have to worry about is the sunshine on them. The sun will break
So, how long were you an active fisherman?
The first time I actually took a job fishing, I was helping as I was a teenage boy. . . . The first time I ever worked with anybody was one quarter and I worked from the first of July until Christmas and I made $60. I was married and had a baby and didn't go in debt. I had some traps--steel traps--and I went out and caught some furs. I caught $120 worth of fur while I was catching $60 worth of fish.
What kind of animals did you catch?
Muskrat mostly. Some mink and some otter and plenty of raccoon. I caught 1500 muskrats one year.
{There was a big market for muskrats years ago.}
The year I caught 1500 they weren't selling that great.
[End of Interview]