LIFE ON THE GRAND BANKS 



21 



day. In the latter case the 

 fishermen will be towed 

 back to their gear again 

 by the schooner and cast 

 adrift when the buoys 

 marking their respective 

 lines appear in sight. 



The picking up of these 

 tiny buoys and flags, 

 scattered over five or six 

 miles of ocean, is quite 

 a knack, and the fishing 

 skippers seem to possess 

 an uncanny sense of lo- 

 cation in finding them. 

 The writer has known 

 schooners being forced 

 to leave their gear in the 

 water and run to port 

 for shelter in gales of 

 wind, and to return two 

 or three days afterward 

 and pick it up again 

 without much trouble. 



When ready to haul the 

 long-line, the fishermen 

 insert a lignum - vitse 

 roller in the gunwale of 

 the dory and pull the 

 anchor and buoy up. 



The end of the line fast 

 to the anchor is detached 

 and the fisherman, stand- 

 ing in the bow of the 

 dory, commences to haul 

 the long-line out of the 

 water. His dory - mate 

 stands immediately behind, and as the 

 line comes in it is his job to coil it back 

 into the tub again after knocking off the 

 untouched bait. 



The fisherman hauling the line over the 

 roller disengages the caught fish by a 

 dexterous twist of the arm. This back- 

 handed jerk whips the hook out of the 

 jaws of the fish and it flops into the bot- 

 tom of the dory. Fish which cannot be 

 cleared in this manner are passed on to 

 the man at the tub, who twists the hook 

 out by taking a few turns of the snood 

 around the "gob stick," which he thrusts 

 into the mouth of the fish. 



A VOLLEY OF "SLATS" MEANS POOR HAULS 



Unmarketable species — sculpins, skate, 

 dogfish, etc. — are knocked off into the sea 



A NEST OF" DORIES AND BULWARKS COVERED WITH ICE 



by a vicious slat against the dory gun- 

 wale. On a quiet summer's day there 

 is no more disheartening sound to a fish- 

 ing skipper than to hear a continuous 

 volley of "slats" coming from the line of 

 dories. It means that the dogfish are 

 swarming on the grounds, and that they 

 have taken the hooks intended for better 

 fish. 



When the lines have been hauled and 

 the last anchor is up, the fishermen row 

 or sail down to the schooner, which is 

 generally . hovering around like a hen 

 keeping guard over her chickens. The 

 dory rounds up alongside the vessel, the 

 painter is caught by some one aboard her, 

 and, after, handing up their tubs of long- 

 lines, the two fishermen pitch out their 

 fish upon the schooner's decks. 



