LIFE ON THE GRAND BANKS 
235 
pull back aboard the schooner again, leav¬ 
ing the location of their lines to be 
marked by a flag or “black-ball” thrust 
into the buoy-keg attached to the anchors 
at each end. 
The lines may be “set” for periods 
varying from thirty minutes to half a 
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 location 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-vitae 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, standing 
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. 
A VOLLEY OF “sLATs” MEANS POOR 
'hauls 
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. 
Unmarketable species—Sculpins, Skate, 
Dogfish, etc.—are knocked off into the sea 
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. 
Certain sections of the deck have been 
penned off for the reception of the catch, 
which prevents the fish from sliding to 
leeward when the schooner rolls. 
THE JOB OF DRESSING DOWN THE CATCH 
At the end of the day, when all hands 
are aboard, the work of “dressing down” 
the catch commences. The fish are split 
and gutted, and some species are be¬ 
headed, by the fishermen, standing at 
tables rigged up on deck. The dressed 
fish are then washed in tubs of salt water 
and consigned to the hold, where they are 
packed away on chopped ice. 
If the vessel is salt-fishing, the fish are 
piled upon each other in the hold-pens 
and liberally covered with coarse salt. 
After the catch has been cleaned and 
stowed away, the men bait up their gear 
for the morrow’s “set.” If the fish are 
biting freely and the catch is heavy, the 
fisherman’s day is a long one. Dories 
will often be swung overside before sun¬ 
rise and the men will finish by midnight. 
There is very little sleep to be got on 
the Banks when the weather is fine and 
the vessel is “on fish,” and the writer 
remembers one occasion in winter fishing 
on a market fisherman when the gang 
were kept hard at it from Sunday night 
to Thursday morning with but an hour’s 
sleep each night. On Thursday a gale of 
wind came along and it was hailed with 
pleasure, as an opportunity to “lay off” 
and catch up on slumber. 
SUMMER FOG WORST ENEMY 
The foregoing description is that of 
the life on a market or fresh-fishing 
schooner running her catches to port for 
consumption in a fresh or smoked state. 
The “marketmen” seldom remain at 
sea longer than ten days, but life aboard 
these craft demands the greatest skill and 
hardihood on the part of skipper and 
