Guy Cox 



only during the annual herring run in 

 March and April. 



"Five or six the first drift and 

 maybe seven the second. That's 

 nothing compared to what people 

 used to catch on this river.' ' 



He's younger than most Roanoke 

 River fishermen — he was initiated into 

 this annual rite of spring at four years 

 old — but he remembers when fisher- 

 men would catch 100, maybe 200 her- 

 ring in a single drift. 



"I could get out there with my 

 daddy, and we'd have so many fish in 

 the net we'd have to haul them in real 

 fast so the boat wouldn't sink before 

 we got to shore," he says. "It certainly 

 ain't like that now." 



He recalls stories from his father 

 and other longtime Jamesville 

 residents who remember the haul 

 seme that operated just across the 

 river until World War II. 



The long net would be floated to 

 the river's south bank, then hauled 

 back with a steam-powered winch to 

 the north shore. Old timers saw thou- 

 sands of fish per haul, he says. 



Cox watches several other fisher- 

 men drift downriver, the bright yellow 

 and orange floats on their nets 

 creating an S on the fast-flowing cur- 

 rent. Their boats are empty too. 



He is saddened by the drastic de- 

 cline in the Roanoke River herring 

 fishery and blames man for its 

 condition. 



"If it keeps going like it is, there 

 won't be no herring in seven, eight 

 years,' ' he says. 



Amen, says Murray L. Nixon, a 

 fisherman who's spent his life reaping 



the harvest of the Chowan, the Roa- 

 noke's sister river. In the wider, lazier 

 Chowan, Nixon has set as many as 24 

 pound nets in a single season. 



Pound-net fishing is labor intensive. 

 One net requires hundreds of yards of 

 mesh and more than 30 hand-cut, 

 hand-trimmed poles to form the net's 

 unique shape and keep it stationary 

 in water. 



So, poor harvests can be especially 

 hard on the pound-net fishermen of 

 the Chowan, Cashie and Middle rivers. 



Other methods of catching herring — 

 such as eel pots, fyke nets, hoop nets, 

 trotlines and rod-and-reels — don't re- 

 quire as much work as pound nets, 

 but fishermen using these methods 

 also report hard times. 



Williams wipes his mouth with the 

 sleeve of his flannel shirt. 



' 'We used to use dugout canoes and 

 drift nets,' ' Williams says of his days 

 as a fisherman. "The current would 

 be so strong, and we'd have to paddle 

 against it to get back to the landing 

 here.' ' 



The dugouts would be full of her- 

 ring, he says. "And we didn't mind 

 the hard work." 



The Jamesville riverfront grays a 

 little as the mid-afternoon sun 

 falls behind tall gum trees on the bluff 

 overlooking the Roanoke. 



Guy Cox drives off with his boat in 

 tow. The crowd at the Cypress Grill 

 thins and Hubert Williams sits on the 

 riverbank, twirling a twig in the calm 



After a third drift downriver, Cox 

 counts 14 fish for his morning's work 

 and quits for the day. Seventy-seven- 

 year-old Hubert Williams watches Cox 

 place a cloth cover over his drift net 

 and hook his boat to a trailer. 



Williams has just eaten at the 

 Cypress Grill, a restaurant that until a 

 few years ago still had sawdust floors. 

 It's difficult to distinguish the grill 

 from the weathered fishing shacks 

 that line the riverbank. 



Folks from all over eastern North 

 Carolina gather at the Cypress Grill in 

 March and April to eat fresh herring 

 cooked the traditional way: fried deep 

 brown. It is only open during the her- 

 ring run. 



Hubert Williams 



water by his feet. 



"It ain't like it used to be and won't 

 ever be the same again," he says. 



"You've got to leave some little ones 

 before they can come back as grown 

 ones. And that's something we just 

 ain't doing." ■ 



The Cypress Grill at Jamesville 



