My Mystical Experience on the River, or How I Wrangled an Alewife
May 27, 2006
Yesterday I received a strange telephone call from a man named Mac Howland, whom I know from my church. Mac and I were supposed to go canoeing on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. I had purchased this long-awaited adventure at our church auction seven years ago, and had never “collected” my trip. I was pleased that we were finally going to ship out, but was intrigued when Mac enquired how I felt about touching fish. I assumed he was talking about fish we would catch, and although I had not expected to go fishing, I said that it would be OK, as long as I didn’t have to gut them. Mac assured me that the fish would be fully alive, they are herring who just need a hand getting over a dam on the Mystic river in Massachusetts as they swim upstream to spawn.
Now, how many people can say that they have been invited to help wrangle fish over a dam? I took the bait, and we set up a time to depart for nearby Medford on Saturday morning, May 27, 2006.
At the appointed hour, Mac pulled up in front of my house in his station wagon with the canoe strapped precariously on top. I boarded, and we drove off to the Mystic River. About ten minutes later, as we entered the parking lot, we noticed a strong odor of fish. I did not believe that we’d be able to smell the live herring from several hundred yards away from the river, but it was true.
There was a great deal of activity already in progress at the dam. Several dozen adults and children milled around the spillway. Each person carried either a bucket or a net. People were standing on the rocks below the dam, swirling their nets in the water, and occasionally lifting a six-inch herring out of the stream. There was quite a lot of white water roiling around these rocks, but this was not an obstacle for the herring. The four-foot high dam just beyond, which divides the Upper Mystic Lake from the Lower Mystic Lake, was the spot that the migrating herring could not manage to navigate. As there is no fish ladder yet on this obstacle course, the fish would be unable to reach their spawning grounds to reproduce.
The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (as opposed to, say, the Division of Submarine fisheries, or perhaps the Division of Terrestrial Fisheries?) oversees the annual herring migrations on Massachusetts rivers. Poaching of herring (in wine?) is forbidden, so there were representatives from the Department there on site.
Mac and I joined the throng at the edge of the stream. I had remembered to don my Teva (tm)sandals www.teva.com just before I left the house, so felt secure on the algae-frosted rocks and concrete that lay below the dam. I picked out a rock at the lowest part of the spillway, and perched my bottom on it, while my feet and ankles were in the water. The area had received a lot of rain two weeks before, resulting in local flooding, and a deluge of thunderstorms had occurred just the night before, so there was a relatively high level of water in the river. The water temperature was quite comfortable for my feet, and the day was sunny with air temperatures in the 70’s. It felt like high summer, although still late spring by the calendar. The ocean temperature had reached 51 degrees F, so the type of herring known locally as the “alewife” (Alosa pseudobarengus) "knew" it was the right time to head inland and up-river.
After a few minutes, I noticed a cold bumping sensation on my ankles. It was the herring, arriving in clusters. I could see a few of the fish attempting to jump up through the rushing water, but not making too much headway because of the force of the flow, which had just danced over the dam. I swished the net around a little, facing the opening upstream, because I figured the fish would try to go up and would wind up going back downstream, hence into my net. Once I used this strategy with good results, I saw others, particulary two girls dressed in turquoise as I was, move lower down to the “bottom” of the spillway and sit on rocks nearby. There were some boys nearby with a net that had a six-foot long pole, and we had to watch our heads so we would not be conked by the vigorous thrusting of this pole as the boys wrestled the Alewives into their bucket.
Sometimes the herring would get stuck in the net, because their diameter at their widest point near the gills was exactly the same size as the holes in the net. Just turning the net inside-out and dumping into the bucket did not work in these instances. I had to grasp the fish around the middle and squeeze it forward the way it was headed out of the net. This would upset the already agitated fish, which would then plop gratefully into the relative safety of the bucket.
When the bucket contained “enough” herring (enough to make a trip over the slimy rocks to the collection spot, but not so many that they ran out of oxygen before they were liberated…I learned that the hard way), I would heave it up out of the river, sometimes using the weight of it to steady myself as the water rushing over the dam threatened to sweep me off my feet. A trip of about twenty feet across the slimy rocks brought me to just underneath the bridge that spans the spillway. Several people were up on top, and would lower another empty bucket down on a rope. The object was to transfer all of one’s fish into the empty bucket, along with some but not all of the water, because too much water made the bucket too heavy to be retrieved upward. After pouring the fish and water from one bucket to the other, I had to tip the full bucket slightly to the side and use my hand to prevent the fish from escaping as I dumped out some of the water. I then gave the bridge people the thumbs-up signal and up the fish went. If the “hauler” was good, the bucket full of fish would NOT careen violently towards one’s head as it started its ascent.
I would then make my way back to “my” rock, and the whole cycle would begin again. If it had not been such a pleasantly warm day, this task would have been much more difficult. The river water actually felt refreshing, not cold, and I found it fun to sit on the rock and have the water splashing all around and over me. Mac was off on the other side of the river, so I chatted with the kids nearby, and was occasionally asked for assistance in squeezing a few fish through the mesh of one of their nets.
Alas, our time with the Alewives had to end too soon, as Mac and I had another adventure awaiting us, which was to canoe from Little Pond in Belmont, Mass., down the Little River to Alewife Brook, and on through Arlington into Medford, where Alewife Brook joins the Mystic. The tale of that adventure shall be recounted separately.
Upon my arrival home, my daughter informed me that I smelled of fish, which was true. I decided that the theme song for the experience should be Van Morrison’s ballad “Into the Mystic”, which he wrote while living in Cambridge, Mass. The next day, I thought I smelled a similar smell coming from the pond across the street, which is connected to Alewife Brook in Arlington. I also had a run-in with a raccoon on Memorial Day (blogged separately) that smelled distinctly fishy.
See the Mystic River Watershed Association’s website http://www.mysticriver.org/ for more information about the Alewife herring run in this location, and the state of Massachusett’s site www.mass.gov/marinefisheries for more information regarding regulations and permits.
There are also 9 “herring viewing opportunities” around the Massachusetts coast to check out from April to June: You may be able to smell when the herring are running!
Yesterday I received a strange telephone call from a man named Mac Howland, whom I know from my church. Mac and I were supposed to go canoeing on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. I had purchased this long-awaited adventure at our church auction seven years ago, and had never “collected” my trip. I was pleased that we were finally going to ship out, but was intrigued when Mac enquired how I felt about touching fish. I assumed he was talking about fish we would catch, and although I had not expected to go fishing, I said that it would be OK, as long as I didn’t have to gut them. Mac assured me that the fish would be fully alive, they are herring who just need a hand getting over a dam on the Mystic river in Massachusetts as they swim upstream to spawn.
Now, how many people can say that they have been invited to help wrangle fish over a dam? I took the bait, and we set up a time to depart for nearby Medford on Saturday morning, May 27, 2006.
At the appointed hour, Mac pulled up in front of my house in his station wagon with the canoe strapped precariously on top. I boarded, and we drove off to the Mystic River. About ten minutes later, as we entered the parking lot, we noticed a strong odor of fish. I did not believe that we’d be able to smell the live herring from several hundred yards away from the river, but it was true.
There was a great deal of activity already in progress at the dam. Several dozen adults and children milled around the spillway. Each person carried either a bucket or a net. People were standing on the rocks below the dam, swirling their nets in the water, and occasionally lifting a six-inch herring out of the stream. There was quite a lot of white water roiling around these rocks, but this was not an obstacle for the herring. The four-foot high dam just beyond, which divides the Upper Mystic Lake from the Lower Mystic Lake, was the spot that the migrating herring could not manage to navigate. As there is no fish ladder yet on this obstacle course, the fish would be unable to reach their spawning grounds to reproduce.
The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (as opposed to, say, the Division of Submarine fisheries, or perhaps the Division of Terrestrial Fisheries?) oversees the annual herring migrations on Massachusetts rivers. Poaching of herring (in wine?) is forbidden, so there were representatives from the Department there on site.
Mac and I joined the throng at the edge of the stream. I had remembered to don my Teva (tm)sandals www.teva.com just before I left the house, so felt secure on the algae-frosted rocks and concrete that lay below the dam. I picked out a rock at the lowest part of the spillway, and perched my bottom on it, while my feet and ankles were in the water. The area had received a lot of rain two weeks before, resulting in local flooding, and a deluge of thunderstorms had occurred just the night before, so there was a relatively high level of water in the river. The water temperature was quite comfortable for my feet, and the day was sunny with air temperatures in the 70’s. It felt like high summer, although still late spring by the calendar. The ocean temperature had reached 51 degrees F, so the type of herring known locally as the “alewife” (Alosa pseudobarengus) "knew" it was the right time to head inland and up-river.
After a few minutes, I noticed a cold bumping sensation on my ankles. It was the herring, arriving in clusters. I could see a few of the fish attempting to jump up through the rushing water, but not making too much headway because of the force of the flow, which had just danced over the dam. I swished the net around a little, facing the opening upstream, because I figured the fish would try to go up and would wind up going back downstream, hence into my net. Once I used this strategy with good results, I saw others, particulary two girls dressed in turquoise as I was, move lower down to the “bottom” of the spillway and sit on rocks nearby. There were some boys nearby with a net that had a six-foot long pole, and we had to watch our heads so we would not be conked by the vigorous thrusting of this pole as the boys wrestled the Alewives into their bucket.
Sometimes the herring would get stuck in the net, because their diameter at their widest point near the gills was exactly the same size as the holes in the net. Just turning the net inside-out and dumping into the bucket did not work in these instances. I had to grasp the fish around the middle and squeeze it forward the way it was headed out of the net. This would upset the already agitated fish, which would then plop gratefully into the relative safety of the bucket.
When the bucket contained “enough” herring (enough to make a trip over the slimy rocks to the collection spot, but not so many that they ran out of oxygen before they were liberated…I learned that the hard way), I would heave it up out of the river, sometimes using the weight of it to steady myself as the water rushing over the dam threatened to sweep me off my feet. A trip of about twenty feet across the slimy rocks brought me to just underneath the bridge that spans the spillway. Several people were up on top, and would lower another empty bucket down on a rope. The object was to transfer all of one’s fish into the empty bucket, along with some but not all of the water, because too much water made the bucket too heavy to be retrieved upward. After pouring the fish and water from one bucket to the other, I had to tip the full bucket slightly to the side and use my hand to prevent the fish from escaping as I dumped out some of the water. I then gave the bridge people the thumbs-up signal and up the fish went. If the “hauler” was good, the bucket full of fish would NOT careen violently towards one’s head as it started its ascent.
I would then make my way back to “my” rock, and the whole cycle would begin again. If it had not been such a pleasantly warm day, this task would have been much more difficult. The river water actually felt refreshing, not cold, and I found it fun to sit on the rock and have the water splashing all around and over me. Mac was off on the other side of the river, so I chatted with the kids nearby, and was occasionally asked for assistance in squeezing a few fish through the mesh of one of their nets.
Alas, our time with the Alewives had to end too soon, as Mac and I had another adventure awaiting us, which was to canoe from Little Pond in Belmont, Mass., down the Little River to Alewife Brook, and on through Arlington into Medford, where Alewife Brook joins the Mystic. The tale of that adventure shall be recounted separately.
Upon my arrival home, my daughter informed me that I smelled of fish, which was true. I decided that the theme song for the experience should be Van Morrison’s ballad “Into the Mystic”, which he wrote while living in Cambridge, Mass. The next day, I thought I smelled a similar smell coming from the pond across the street, which is connected to Alewife Brook in Arlington. I also had a run-in with a raccoon on Memorial Day (blogged separately) that smelled distinctly fishy.
See the Mystic River Watershed Association’s website http://www.mysticriver.org/ for more information about the Alewife herring run in this location, and the state of Massachusett’s site www.mass.gov/marinefisheries for more information regarding regulations and permits.
There are also 9 “herring viewing opportunities” around the Massachusetts coast to check out from April to June: You may be able to smell when the herring are running!
- Monument River Fishway, Monument River, Bournedale
- Lower Mill Pond Dam and Fishway, Stony Brook, Brewster
- Alewife Brook, town of Essex
- Wareham Street Dam and Fishway, Nemasket River, Middleboro
- Woolen Mill Dam and Fishway, Parker River, Newbury
- Jenny Grist Mill Dam and Fishway, Town Brook, Plymouth
- Mill Pond Dam and Fishway, Agawam River, Wareham
- Watertown Dam and Fishway--Charles River, Watertown
- Jackson Square Dam and Fishway, Back River, Weymouth
The list above is from the state’s publication entitled “A Guide to Viewing River Herring in Massachusetts”. To report herring poaching (NOT in wine) call the Massachusetts Environmental Police at (800) 632-8075.
posted by BlogMama | Tuesday, May 30, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home