232 
THE BOOK OF FISHES 
BAITING HALIBUT LINES WITH FRESH HERRING 
There are three kinds of fisheries on the Banks—salt fishing, fresh fishing, and halibut fishing. 
throughout the year with hard-working 
skippers usually make a good income, 
though it is never commensurate with the 
risks they take. 
The crew, or “gang,” of a Banker runs 
from sixteen to twenty-five men. A 
schooner “running ten dories” would 
have a crew sufficient to man ten dories 
with two fishermen in each. In addition to 
these twenty men, there are the skipper, 
the cook, a deck-hand, and, if the vessel is 
an auxiliary, an engineer. In some vessels 
neither deck-hand nor engineer is carried. 
NO FAVORITES ON A BANKS SCHOONER 
All navigating is done by the skipper. 
The men are primarily fishermen, but 
they are under the skipper’s orders and 
must help to sail the vessel, to steer and 
keep a lookout, and to set and furl sail. 
On passages to and from the Banks, 
the fishermen take regular turns in stand¬ 
ing a watch at wheel and lookout. With 
a gang of twenty men and two men to a 
watch, this period is not a very long one, 
as a rule, but in bitter winter weather, 
with a hard breeze blowing, an hour 
at wheel and lookout is long enough. 
I have known times when ten minutes at 
the wheel required relief to thaw out 
fingers and toes numbed with zero frost. 
When sail has to be set or made fast. 
all hands are called. If the men are 
asleep and it is only a small job that re¬ 
quires four or five hands, the whole 
crowd is turned out to do it. By doing 
this, no favorites are made and no one 
can complain that he is being imposed 
upon. I have seen twenty men roused 
from slumber to take in a jib—a job three 
fellows could have done—and the skipper 
saw to it that no man loafed below. 
During the run-off to the “grounds” 
the fishermen are busy overhauling their 
fishing gear. Each man has his dory- 
mate and his particular dory and they 
divide the work between them. It is in¬ 
cumbent upon them to have their lines 
in good shape and their dory properly 
equipped when the skipper sings out, 
“Bait up!”, the schooner having reached 
the Bank to be fished. 
THE SOUNDING LEAD IS THE SKIPPEr’s 
OTHER EYE 
Six to eight tubs, or skates, of gear 
have to be kept in order and baited by 
the two dory-mates—a task which calls 
for much skill and deftness of fingers, 
when some 2,000 hooks have to be baited 
with pieces of herring, squid, or capelin 
every time a “set” is made. 
The passage to the Banks may be a run 
of from fifty to five hundred miles and it 
