A SON OF 

 MANNS HARBOR: 



Retired Pound Netter 

 Shares Stories 



By Katie Mosher 



\4anns Harbor has a rich fishing heritage. Just 

 ask Melvin Twiddy. He loves to tell the stories 

 of the people, the fish, the storms and the 

 changes over time. 



Twiddy, who turns 81 in late January, was 

 only 9 years old when he arrived in the 

 soundside community. "The people of Manns 

 Harbor raised me," he says. By 13, he was 

 spending some Saturdays fishing with W. F. 

 Tillett, better known as Bugg, whose family had 

 taken in Twiddy as one of their own. 



"He built the boat that I am restoring," 

 Twiddy says. Tillett built the shad boat about 

 1928. It had several owners before Twiddy 

 bought it about 1940. "I fished it until 1995," he 

 says, admiring the boat. "I could sit right here 

 and look at those lines. It's a pleasure." 



The design is considered a dead-rise, which 

 differs from more rounded shadboats. 'Tve seen 

 more shad on that boat than on a round-bottom" 

 Twiddy says. 



The keel features a single log — similar to 

 canoes used by Native Americans. Twiddy has 

 put fiberglass on the outside, and the same paint 

 is used for luxury boats built in Wanchese. 



After several years of restoration, he 

 showed off the boat at Dare Days last summer. 



Fishing Heritage 



Dare County is now a tourist draw, but that 

 was not always the case. "Manns Harbor was 

 strictly a fishing village. There was nothing 

 else," Twiddy says of the community once 

 known as Croatan, but was declared Manns 

 Harbor when the first post office arrived in 1 873. 



Early settlers had focused on agriculture, 

 but fishing later took hold. "When they got the 

 railroad line to Elizabeth City, they could ship 

 fish north," Twiddy says. 



Northern buyers would work through "fish 

 drummers," mostly local men who would drum 

 up business in various communities and handle 

 shipments. Wanting to ensure regular suppliers 



from year to year, buyers 

 sometimes offered advances 

 of $100 on the next season's 

 catch. 



In the 1920s and 1930s, 

 a successful season would 

 clear $300 for a fishing 

 family. "They could have 

 seven or eight kids — and 

 send one or two to teacher- 

 training school," Twiddy 

 says. 



The fishing community 

 had an honor system for setting pound nets. 

 "They respected each other," Twiddy says. 

 "They'd set 800 yards, one to the other. They got 

 within 150 yards of each other." 



Families from Stumpy Point fished the 

 northern waters, while Manns Harbor folks 

 covered the south. "Whether it was a good 

 season or a bad season, they fished the same 

 place spring and fall," Twiddy says. 



"Back then, shad was more popular than 

 the flounder," says Margaret Twiddy, Melvin's 

 wife of 62 years. "The people who loved shad 

 roe are dead," she adds. But shad is still the 

 favorite fish in the Twiddy household. 



And one shad story is a favorite of friends, 

 who marvel that Melvin Twiddy would go 1 ,200 

 miles one-way just to learn more about a single 

 fish he caught. 



Back in the 1980s, Twiddy caught a shad 

 that had been tagged in Nova Scotia more than 

 400 days earlier. The next year, he went to the 

 Atlantic province to ask some questions — and 

 to tell them of his treasured waters. 



"We missed the tagging team by 30 

 minutes," he recalls. But he saw the large 

 tracking map, with tacks showing the travels of 

 various shad from Nova Scotia to Florida 



Of Wind and Carp 



Weather is always a factor in fishing. 

 "When the water temperature is below 58, it's 

 too cold for a trot line for crabbing," Twiddy 

 says. "I knew when it got too cold," he says. "It 

 would stop — like cutting off a spigot." 



And he learned from veteran pound netters 

 that a hard freeze spells trouble for flounder. "If 

 there is a hard freeze, it takes two or three years 



Melvin Twiddy restored this shad boat built in 1928. 



for them to come back," he says. 



The hurricane of Sept. 14, 1944 — before 

 storms were given names — stands out. "This 

 storm blew about the hardest of any storm — 

 about 150 miles per hour." After that storm, the 

 catch was light. 



Hurricane Hazel in 1954 did more damage. 

 "We had 12 pound nets flattened. It ruined the 

 season," Twiddy says. "Up to that point it had 

 been a good season — ahead of 1953. And 1953 

 had been the best year I ever had 'til then." 



Sometimes, though, the change in catch 

 had no identifiable match to the weather. Like 

 the years that carp was king. About 1940 or 

 1941, a man with a strong Northern accent 

 arrived on the ferry. "He said, 'How about 

 selling some carp,' " Twiddy recalls. 



The man, who came to be known as 

 Sammy Carp, wanted live fish to sell in the 

 Jewish markets in Philadelphia and New York. 

 Now, not much carp was being caught that 

 spring — nor was there a local demand. But 

 Sammy was even paying the men to build boxes 

 from lumber sent from nearby Buffalo City. 



"We started building carp boxes," Twiddy 

 says. "Then we couldn't fill the boxes fast 

 enough. We started catching carp." 



Soon the word got out, and demand went 

 up. "That ran the price up to $3 a tub," Twiddy 

 says. And the carp kept coming. "We got three 

 boat loads from one pound net," Twiddy says. 



After about four or five years, the northern 

 markets found new sources of carp. "It's 

 strange," Twiddy says, still marveling at how the 

 supply disappeared as quickly as the demand. 

 "It would have been a headache to fill your nets 

 with them and not sell them." □ 



20 WINTER 2002 



