Social barriers don't stop women who fish 



Lucille Truitt doesn't hesitate about 

 closing the door on her junk shop in 

 Oriental to go fishing with her husband, 

 Billy. After living some 50 years on the 

 banks of the Neuse River, Lucille feels at 

 home on the water. She can smell a 

 school of fish on the air and read the 

 weather in the sky. She talks of mare's 

 tails, mullet fishing and painting the 

 thing she knows best — the river. 



Billy, a commercial fisherman, says 

 Lucille is good help when it comes to 

 fishing. "I'd rather take Lucille fishing 

 than any man I know," Billy says. "She 

 always believes we're going to catch 

 fish." 



Lucille has pulled crab pots, shrimped 

 and fished nets. She fishes alongside 

 Billy on the couple's 30-foot boat, the 

 Sea Hound. "Fishing was born into 

 me," Lucille says. "I spent the first six 

 years of my life on the river. We lived on 

 an old flat my father pulled up and down 

 the river. He fished for shad and my 

 mother dried the fish and picked the fat- 

 backs. We finally settled in Oriental 

 when they had to put me in school. My 

 mother says those days on the river were 

 the happiest days of her life." 



A sparkle comes to her eye and a smile 

 spreads across her face as Lucille talks of 

 fishing. "Mullet fishing is the best sport 

 in the world," Lucille says. "Billy and I 

 go out on dark nights before the moon 

 comes up and we listen for the mullet to 

 jump. We wait until we hear two or 

 three. That usually means there's a 

 pretty large school. We set the net and 

 then start hollering, banging the side of 

 the boat and slapping the water. Boy, 

 the mullet start flying. One hit me right 

 in the head last week . We had f if ty j ump 

 in the boat and the net was loaded. We 

 caught 23 boxes of mullet that night." 



Lucille says Billy gives the orders on 

 the boat. "He does favor me," she says. 

 "He treats me like a woman. He's the 

 boss on the water and I'm the boss at 

 home." 



Lucille says she hasn't received any 

 flak from other men about her job on the 

 water. And occasionally when another 

 fisherman needs some help, Lucille 

 abandons Billy to become first mate on 

 another boat. ' ' They all accept me as one 

 of the boys," she says. 



While Lucille loves fishing, she wishes 

 it offered a more steady income. "You 

 never know how much you're going to 

 make," she says. "And things are worse 



than they used to be. We're getting fif- 

 teen cents a pound for mullet, the same 

 price we were getting fifteen years ago." 



Lucille says she is seeing more women 

 on the water these days. "More men are 

 taking their wives," she says. "It's 

 cheaper to train the wives than to hire 

 help." 



Today more and more women are tak- 

 ing to North Carolina's coastal waters to 

 fish. Some women, like Lucille, help 

 their husbands; others fish alone. And 

 some women crew on large trawlers. But 

 no one knows exactly how many North 

 Carolina women are plying the waters in 

 search of fish. 



Barbara Jordan, a Belhaven crabber, 

 says she loves the freedom fishing offers 

 her. "It's great not having a boss looking 

 over your shoulder," she says. "I go out 

 there, work hard and make decent 

 money. I couldn't stand putting forty 

 hours behind a desk each week." 



Barbara rises before dawn and cranks 

 the motor on her 19-foot Sea Ox before 

 covering 13 miles of Pamlico Sound. She 

 pulls up every one of her 150 crab pots by 

 hand, occasionally leaving her 116- 

 pound body sore at the end of her run. 

 "It's man's work," Barbara says. "But 



women can do it. Women aren't as 

 fragile as they used to be." 



Barbara believes her career as a 

 fisherman actually gives her more time 

 for her family than a conventional job 

 would. She's back at the dock most mor- 

 nings by 10 a.m. with the rest of the day 

 to call her own. 



After eight years of fishing, Barbara 

 says she feels confident on the water. 

 "You can't go out there scared or 

 something will happen to you, ' ' she says. 

 "It takes self-confidence to fish just like 

 it does to do anything else." 



Ida Mae Kennedy can put most men 

 to shame when it comes to clamming. On 

 agoodday, IdaMaecanrake 1500clams 

 in four hours. Only recently has open- 

 heart surgery slowed her pace. Born in 

 Shallote 70 years ago, Ida Mae has been 

 fishing all her life. "If you take me 

 away from fishing, I'd probably die," 

 she says. 



Ida Mae hasn't let being a woman 

 stop her from doing anything she 

 wanted to do. She's worked in factories, 

 driven a city bus and hauled logs for a 

 timber company. "I've never met any 

 resistance from men or women," Ida 

 Continued on next page 



"Fishing was born into me. / 

 spent the first six years of my 

 life on the river. We lived on an 

 old flat my father pulled up 

 and down the river. " 



— Lucille Truitt 



