Appendix E

HERRING RUNS IN YARMOUTH HISTORY

By Duncan Oliver

Too often, Cape Codders assume that herring only come to Brewster or perhaps the Cape Cod Canal. However, looking at maps you’ll find that eleven Cape towns have street names with “herring” in them and eight have brooks, streams, rivers or coves that include the name “herring.” Clearly, herring have had an impact on our past. Thoreau wrote that soon the Cape would have more rivers named Herring than the herring themselves.

What about Yarmouth? According to some linguists, the Indian word Mattakeeset, meaning “place of many fish,” was a name for a section of Yarmouth, and a variation of that word is now the name of our middle school.

In this article, we’ll use the word “herring” rather than “alewife,” although they are frequently used interchangeably. The herring family includes several species as well as menhaden and shad. Herring are found along the entire East Coast of the United States and are one of the most abundant fish in the world. These eight- to fifteen-inch fish return to fresh water each spring to spawn, usually April to early May. Indians said that a certain bush would flower when the herring and shad returned, and that bush is known today as a shadbush. Actually, they return when the freshwater temperature becomes warmer than the salt. The parent fish that survive will return to salt water after spawning. The young fish head to the sea starting in July and throughout the fall. A female lays up to 100,000 eggs, and these eggs are imprinted so that the young will want to return to the same pond. Fish that return to fresh water to spawn are called “anadromous.” Atlantic eels migrate just in reverse, spending their lives in fresh water and returning to saltwater to breed. They are called “catadromous.”

Herring have played an important role in history. They’ve been a food source and are great bait for lobster traps. They’ve been used as fertilizer, especially under corn. Up and through the 1800s, much of the catch was used for human consumption because they kept exceptionally well when salted and smoked. They were then strung on willow or apple sticks and hung in an out-of-the-way place. The longer a herring is in fresh water, the less flavor it has. Today, mainly the roe (eggs) are eaten, either baked until dry or fried in butter. Cape Codders smoked herring almost from the start, but Nova Scotians and people from New Brunswick gained the moniker “herring chokers” for the amount of herring they ate. Some Scandinavians are also called this. The Wampanoag Indians supposedly had a secret recipe for smoking herring that people loved.

Locals have regulated herring runs from the beginning, both to ensure everyone was able to get some and to prevent the damming of streams for water power, which could prevent herring from reaching their freshwater ponds. Every herring run has faced changes over the years. Brewster had cement fish ladders installed starting in 1945 and has replaced the undersized culvert on Route 6A with a seventeen-foot culvert, which will help herring as well as restore marshland. The Bourne run was reconstructed in 1917, three years after the Cape Cod Canal was built. The run incorporates almost half of the canal. Today, Massachusetts has more than 150 active fish passage ways, more than any other coastal state in the nation. In 2005, the state enacted a ban in the catching, sale or possession of river herring. That ban is still in effect.

Yarmouth has had at least seven herring runs in its past. Because Bass River runs were difficult to control, as the river was owned jointly with Dennis, in 1849, both towns asked the state legislature to appoint a joint herring committee to control weirs and fishing. Bass River is the beginning of two Yarmouth runs. One went to Laban’s Pond on the Bass River Golf Course. Pesticides and fertilizers ended this run. Another run went from Follins Pond to Mill Pond up Hamblin Brook to Miss Thatcher’s Pond near Seminole Drive. This run was quite profitable, selling for $710 to Nathan Grush in 1880. In 1883, it produced the second most herring in the state, 280,797. However, by 1914, the highest price paid for any herring grant on Bass River was just $31. A third run went past West Yarmouth’s Baxter Mill up into the Mill Pond (another one) and on to Little Sandy Pond, now town recreation land. A fourth went up Mill Creek, then under Route 28 near where the 1750 house used to stand and on through the cranberry bogs and to Jabez End’s Pond just south of Buck Island Road.

A fifth went up Parker’s River to Swan Pond and then up Clear Brook under what is now Forest Road to Long Pond. In the long term, this was probably the most profitable in the town. The state legislature enabled it under Chapter 75 of the acts of 1842 (Swift says 1843) when it allowed the owners to open an outlet from Long Pond to Swan Pond. This was a half mile of digging! The Long Pond Fishing Co. also had to improve Parker’s River. In 1881, they requested legislation to enlarge their powers. The company made money but owned little in the way of assets. At its corporate meeting in December 1889, it listed capital stock at $863, real estate at $10, buildings at $100 and machinery at $25. This run was listed for sale in the newspapers in 1922, but nothing indicated whether it was sold. It did continue in operation and was important enough in the years after World War II that Johnny Goodwin had the commercial rights to the herring and took many barrels. It is still an active run.

The sixth and seventh runs both went up Chase Garden Creek on the north side and into White’s Brook. One then went into Matthews Pond on Bass River Rod and Gun Club property, while the other continued under Route 6A to a little pond behind the town pumping station building on Union Street.

Three runs in Yarmouth still have herring use them. The biggest run is the Clear Brook Run. Under the direction of the Yarmouth Department of Natural Resources, the brook was dug out in 2009 where it was too shallow, and a culvert was removed at the end of Clear Brook Road. A bridge was built over the stream. Federal funds helped make this possible. These improvements help maintain water levels.

DNR officer William Bonnetti is in charge of the runs and said that Americorps helped improve that run in 2009. In 2011, the Cape Cod Salties fishing organization helped clean the whole brook and did a wonderful job. Herring can be seen from the bridge at the end of Clear Brook Road and from the walkway on Forest Road. Before the improvements, some herring made it through to Long Pond, but now far more are making their spawning journey.

The fish ladder beside the Baxter Mill on Route 28 is still active. Herring used to swim through Mill Pond and up to Little Sandy Pond, but that stream is now blocked. The herring spawn in Mill Pond and return to the ocean down Mill River.

In the 1960s, the Bass River Rod and Gun Club built a fish ladder into Matthews Pond to allow the herring to spawn there. The state stocked it for several years until the herring returned on their own. The club, with the help of groups such as the Cape Cod Salties, maintains the run. The year 2010 was good, but in 2011, not quite as many fish entered the run. In the fall of 2010, the state and federal governments started the process to rebuild it. These processes take time, and it may be a couple of years before the money becomes available.

So when the shadbush flowers this spring, look for herring right here in Yarmouth. Remember the statewide ban on taking herring, so only look. The osprey and seagulls know when they arrive—they are part of the welcoming committee!