There aren’t many fish stages left bordering the shores of Newfoundland; the sight of codfish being pronged up from a boat’s pound to its deck and from there to fishing tables is captured only in yellowed photos. So when there’s a chance for a fisherman’s offspring to give in to nostalgia and light up her eyes, have her senses bathed in sea air – liver and lights shivering with excitement – I’m all for it.
My husband, Clarence, had been gearing up for the summer food fishery all winter and while snow fell silently outside the shed, grinding sounds erupted inside. My father’s discarded 25-horsepower Johnson outboard motor, that had lain unused in his basement for years, was now in the tinker’s hands. Clarence spent long hours in the shed sniffing the sensuous odour of grease and oil and stroking the cold parts of a motor he had taken apart, piece by piece, to scrutinize. He found compatible parts, sanded others, and replaced a few screws he had broken off. Then he pulled the cord and got the machine roaring in a bucket of fresh water. He came in out of the cold shed and sat by the fire with a sea-blue look in his green eyes.
The man didn’t dance a jig when he heard there would be a food fishery. He stood positively still and wanted everyone else to do the same as he cocked his ear for the CBC’s announcement of food fishery dates. Then he umped and muttered, “For sure ’twill be blowing a gale those days.”
Nevertheless, he got himself primed for cod-fishing by going trouting. He rummaged through his gearbox and found a lovely, colourful, coated hook that any exotic fly would kill to be. Then before the crack of dawn he took the hook to the trout in Deer Lake. Before the cock had time to crow, the man came home. He didn’t stop until he got to the bedroom with three large, slimy creatures hanging by their open mouths from an alder stick. He stopped me in the middle of a dream I never wanted to end by announcing that other people on the lake had caught only three small fish among them. He wanted me to heat up the frying pan while he gutted his treasures.
The crows and robins were in full chorus later on in the morning when an 80-year-old man walking through the morning mist stopped to talk fish and to predict the outcome of the food fishery. That got the man shivering with excitement as he sat sipping a coffee in the summer air and anticipating a ride all the way from the Humber Valley to the east coast where my father’s 16-foot flat waited for the engine that would make it ride the waves with glee.
Then came the weekend the tinker had waited for while slaving away all winter in the shed. He now hoisted the motor, looking spanking new, to the trunk of the car.
We got as far as Clarenville on a Thursday night, got there through rain and fog, shuddering from the fright of sighting a large moose lolling in the centre of the road as if he knew it was codfish that were in trouble this weekend.
The man had time to go to a hardware store in Clarenville and get his daily fix of testosterone-building tool fever. That’s where men go to daydream swaggering, sauntering, sniffing the air for new rubber and other things. I noticed one man (there may have been more) standing still in the centre of an aisle. At first he appeared to be worshiping something. His head was lifted, his hands folded as he yielded to the aura of tools and their parts. His pelvis started to rock. You would think he was at an Elvis Presley sync concert. A spell was broken when a woman called: “Come on, John, before you carry the place off on your back, throw it down and make love to it.” He looked at her as if he didn’t see her, didn’t know her, didn’t care that her parts were warmer, softer, likely available.
The man with me bought an orange tube, round and long like a snakeskin. He took it back to the house where his Norwegian jigger lay new and shiny, a stainless steel beauty, its hook shaved off and a regular one sedded on. He snipped a length of orange tube and slipped it over his hook to keep it safe. Its barb was ready to be baited with shrimp or caplin – ready to hook an unsuspecting fish.
I raised an eyebrow and murmured, “Codfish are going to think it’s Halloween – a night of tricks – and swim away. You’ll likely catch a sculpin, something too ugly-looking to eat.”
We were blessed with holy water as we made our way to Conception Bay. That’s what comes from having Trinity Bay and Conception Bay alongside each other and Placentia (known as placenta to some mainlanders) in between. The sky brightened up through Sunnyside, a name that always makes me think of eggs.
As we drove along, the radio was on and so was an Open Line show. One man reported that he was out in a 16-foot rodney and the wind was 50 clicks. Southern winds were moving the boat around as if it were a balloon. His line stayed right on top of the water. We got the picture. It was a day to hug the land and try to find a few hatched chickens to count.
My father and his sons had been out in boat early in the day. They had sculled to the fishing grounds with oar and paddles and had caught seven small fish between them and a sculpin.
“’Tis not the finest kind of day,” the seaman warned. “You’ll have the wind and sea blowing bubbles. Be prepared to blow bubbles back.”
My father kept several life jackets wrapped in garbage bags and placed in a closed container in his flat-bottomed boat. He had cut black rubber bands from an old tire and wrapped them around the bags. I was in such a rush to see how “the old engine made new” would work under the pull of the man that I paid little attention to how I was putting on a life jacket.
“You’ve got your life jacket on inside out,” the man called. “The red goes on the outside so a helicopter can spot you and pick you up if you land in water.”
An unfortunate choice of words, I thought just as the man yanked the cord and the boat headed out to sea with me almost going over the side.
Once we got far enough to let the boat idle, I let out my line and drew it toward me again and again in a rhythm that was disturbed by the boat bucking like a wild horse climbing waves and trying to toss us off its back. I fished while the man kept one hand on the handle of the engine and the other on his line. The boat was kicking up and the engine had to tame it. My line was trying to reach out into the bay instead of dropping down to where it would invite fish to dance on my hook.
I was pulling back and forth on my line when the man decided there were no fish – all because he was hauling away on an empty jigger. I pulled in my dripping line, watching it skitter over the churning water. First, the hook that was meant for a mackerel came up sporting a wide-eyed tomcod waving its tail: a fish out of water that seemed really pleased to see me. The bottom hook had a little bigger fish with dark, rounded fins. It waved its tail, then banged my hand as I, feeling cruel, tried to release the rockfish. I now understood what it would mean to have a rock in my pot.
I had been hoping to bring to shore a fish as large as Uncle Charlie Kennedy’s legendary one. He caught a fish with a britchin that filled a 10-pound butter tub. Then again, maybe I could catch a 100-pound fish like my father and his brother Jim caught many years ago. It won first prize in the Harbour Grace Fair. Back then, fish were so thick and high in the water you could see them. It was nothing to rock your boat on a whale’s back either.
In this, his children’s generation, my father’s blunt words rang in my ears: “Nothing can escape the scraping by draggers on the seabed. Canadian and foreign trawlers steal in winter the seed that once supplied the fisherman’s spring-to-fall income. You can’t catch fish in June, July, and August that were caught in January and February.” He grunted, “Northern cod. Does the cod know it’s a Northern cod? We never caught a Northern cod. Codfish were all the same to us. There’s no fences in the sea to keep the fish from moving north or south.”
Sea mist settled over our faces as we turned the boat toward the cove. It hid white morning glories, their heart-shaped leaves hanging on vines climbing the grey cliffs of Hibbs Cove below green hills where grey gulls flecked burnt-red sheds.
As if there wasn’t enough water already beneath us, rain spat into the sea, popping holes like gunshots that spread as if they were rocks skipping over water. It was a good day to have your pores plugged. Soon wind settled into a stun breeze of 20–25 knots. Rain dripped off my nose and the man figured we had all had enough of a skittery day.
As I was coming up the path from the wharf with my treasures, some idler asked, “Where’d yer get yewer fish?” I eyeballed him and employed a tactic used by an old fisherman who didn’t want to tell too much. “In the water, sir,” I answered.
The idler asked other fishermen: “Ere one?” and got the classic fishermen’s answer: “Nar one.”
Back at the house, under the watchful eye of my marmalade cat who was trying to prove that his tongue was longer than my fish, I cut and cleaned the two little fish. Then I curled them in a small butter tub for my parents to have on a winter day, fish to pan fry and eat to their hearts’ content (without having to travel all the way to the place with the name).
When the food fishery days ended, the man took the motor back home, put it in a bucket of fresh water, and washed the salt of the sea away.
“Never mind,” I encouraged him. “You can always go fishing in your mind. Old fishermen will tell you that’s how it’s done these days. Or you can pretend you’re on a dragger . . .”
Many things in Newfoundland have more than one name. If you don’t know – or you do know, but you can’t get it on the tip of your tongue – you can always call something a thingamajig or a whatcamacallit, or an oodle addle.
Consider the skate with its flat head and body, broad wings, and slender tail. It’s a skider, tinker, ginny, flaie, banjo, maidenray, and roker. That seems like a few names too many. Not to finish here. The skate has adjectives to describe members of its family: smooth skate, thorny skate, starry skate, prickly skate.
The herring, a fatty fish with a blue-green back and silver belly, has the nicknames digby, mattie, and its young are called sild or yawling. Salted herring come by the name protestant while herring smoked in a sod house are called smuckers.
The redfish is known as brean, Norway haddock, sea bream, Berghilt, redbarsch, redperch, sebaste, soldier, and ocean perch.
The stickleback, a yellowish-green fish found in fresh and brackish ponds, has names that stretch longer than itself: banstickle, bannystickle, spanstickle, scaghler, thornback, prickly, doctor, and sprinkler.
The codfish, a bulgy-eyed fish with a dusty and spotty brown back and white belly, averages 15–20 pounds, though 100-plus pound cod have been caught. One female cod can shed as many as four million eggs.
bastard ∼ a codfish too small to sell.
berry fish ∼ a small codfish with a red berry-like growth under its gills caused by a shortage of food.
blower ∼ a very large codfish.
duffy fish ∼ codfish with a round, blunted head.
foxy tomcod ∼ a small reddish-brown codfish.
jersey fish ∼ codfish caught and cured in Newfoundland by fishermen from the Channel Islands.
loader ∼ A codfish with a blunt head, or a broken nose, was the sign of a large catch the next day.
logy (a soaker) ∼ a five-foot-long codfish of inferior quality.
mother fish ∼ a codfish breeder.
Northern cod ∼ lighter grey codfish that come through the Strait of Belle Isle and are found on the Hamilton Banks, Labrador.
podley ∼ a tomcod less than a foot long.
poodler ∼ an immature codfish.
rock cod ∼ a low-grade cod caught near shore. It is darker than ordinary cod and has a black-looking stomach lining.
seal-head cod ∼ a rare cod with a deformed head, possibly from being bitten by a larger cod.
slocume (leggy, rounder, tomcod) ∼ a small codfish that is headed, gutted, and salted without being split.
smothered fish ∼ fish killed by strangulation in nets.
snig ∼ a small, young tomcod.
snub-nosed cod ∼ a cod with a round blunt nose.
swallow tail ∼ a codfish with an angular cut in its tail made by the owner.
tod ∼ a small number of salted and dried cod piled on a fish flake.
tomcod ∼ a young codfish.
baiser ∼ a large trout.
bubbly squall (squid squall, medusa, sea nettles, sea dab, shimera) ∼ jellyfish
caplin ∼ a small fish with green- and brown-tinged sides and a silver belly. The fish is about seven inches long and has a narrow face.
conner ∼ a small sea fish, generally not fished for food.
crinkly dick ∼ a rock gunnel.
cushies ∼ Labrador name for small freshwater fish.
flatfish ∼ a flat-looking fish (e.g. braisle, dabby, flatty, flounder, grey sole, plaice, turbot).
grilse, slink ∼ a bay and landlocked salmon. It is small, thin, and white.
guffy ∼ sculpin. A spring scavenger that lies around shore and goes by many names: horny whore, pig fish, plugeye, puffin, scopy, scully, scummy, scumpy, toadfish. Hitting it on the stomach blows it up.
herring jack ∼ American and Canadian white shad (herring).
horse mackerel ∼ tuna fish.
lawnce ∼ a sand eel.
ling ∼ a fish much like a codfish but with a flattened head and a narrow, tapered tail.
lock leven ∼ a trout.
lord fish ∼ a fish with a hump.
lump ∼ a black, round fish that floats when it is dead.
ouananiche ∼ landlocked salmon.
pooler ∼ a salmon not yet spawned.
pufferfish (sunfish) ∼ an ugly, rounded, bloated-looking fish. It doesn’t have a tail.
sea stick ∼ a herring salted at sea.
rollers ∼ male caplin at spawning time. They roll in ahead of the female scull (school).
rubbish ∼ any breed of saltwater fish other than cod or salmon.
saltwater snake ∼ a marine fish with a dorsal fin.
seacat ∼ a black and orange fish.
seal bait ∼ small white smelt that swim around rocks.
spotted wolf ∼ catfish.
suckers ∼ freshwater fish.
tansies (blennies, rock eels) ∼ tiny, snake-like, saltwater fish, brown on the back and yellow on the gut.
tom conner ∼ a blue perch.
yellowjack ∼ a yellowtail fish.
A squid may not be a fish, but it is fished for and given several names: devilfish, old soldier (redcoat), and calamari (when it is used as food). Old soldier refers to a rotting squid, its reddish coat stiff.
“Nanna, how can you make fish when they are already made when they come from the sea?”
Today’s generation will look at the golden leaf of a codfish and ask, “How do you make codfish?”
First you have to picture the fishermen going into the woods and cutting trees for the boat they will use to catch fish. Sometimes a crooked tree trunk was carried out on a man’s back to be used as a keel. Then you picture the fishermen building a boat through a long, cold winter.
Trawls were made and nets knitted in a store loft. Sometimes the work was done in a kitchen while a kettle sang or sighed on a kitchen stove. The aroma of baking bread mixed with the strong tang of twine being seded and quoiled (coiled) in half tubs, or nets being knit on a card with a netting needle, falling around the fisherman’s knees like a shawl.
Tides, winds, fog, and distance hampered the fishermen, but they made their living catching fish on handlines and trawls, and dipping them from seine nets and traps. Fishermen kept the fish in the pounds of the boat until they got in to the cove or harbour. There the boat was tied to the stage and fish were thrown up from the pound to the deck and then pronged and heaved upon the stagehead, where they were pronged into an indulgence (fish box). Families – mothers, fathers, children – all helped.
At the fishing table, the throat cutter grabbed the fish by the eyes with his thumb and forefinger, slit the throat and cut the belly to the tail. The fish was then passed to the gutter, who removed the entrails. (The liver was thrown through a table opening into a bucket below. It would be placed in casks and left to render into cod oil. Sometimes britchins, shaped like britches and full of cod roe, were saved for a pan fry. Fish offal was dropped through stage openings to the water below where gulls and fish ate it.) The gutter slid the fish to the splitter who headed the fish and pushed it against the soundboard where he removed its soundbone in a flick. The fish was dropped into a puncheon of water where it was washed and thrown into a wheelbarrow.
Once the wheelbarrow was loaded with fish, it was wheeled inside the stage where the fish were spread on its floor and sprinkled with salt. This process continued with each daily catch of fish spread in layer upon layer until the stage was full, leaving only a walkway through the middle of the stage. The “salt bulked” fish were left for several weeks. Toward the fall, the salt crystals were shaken off and the fish were washed in a puncheon of water and scrubbed down with a handmade rag mop. Then the fishermen took this “waterhorse” fish (one method) by barrow (a flat, wooden frame with two handles at each end) to fish flakes where they were spread head to tail face-up on boughs and nets strung over the flakes. The fish were “made up” in the evening or whenever there was a chance of rain. They were made into bulks, skins up and tails in, while the napes formed a rosette. The fish were covered to keep flies and fly spits off the flesh. Once the fish had a few good drying days, they were light and golden and ready to be taken to the merchant’s warehouse to be shipped to markets.
During the summer, some fish were pickled and placed in barrels until the salt melted (in a few days to a week). Then while the fishermen were out to sea hauling nets, their families stayed on land washing and spreading fish. This was a quicker method of making fish, and a chance for ready cash.
baccalieu (baccalaos) ∼ dried codfish.
banjo ∼ a salt codfish.
Brazil market ∼ lightly salted, hard dried fish.
cullage ∼ an inferior grade of fish. Sometimes fish had blood clot marks made by a prong.
dun fish (scruff) ∼ brown, discoloured low-grade fish due to faulty drying and curing.
half-salt ∼ fish half-cured, just enough to keep it from spoiling.
heavy fish ∼ heavily salted fish, not drained before it was shipped to market.
Italian ∼ choice codfish: reasonably thick, hard-dried, well-split, clean on the back and face, slightly yellow cast. Mediterranean bound.
Labrador slob ∼ a poor grade of Labrador fish.
Labrador ton ∼ fish caught in Labrador, heavily salted, washed, and given three days, drying weather.
madeira ∼ second-class fish (average) graded for colour, appearance, quality. Too much salt breaks the fish.
mud fish (green fish) ∼ codfish particularly split, salted, and placed in pickle all winter.
ordinary cure ∼ fish salted in between lightly and heavily salted. Medium-cured.
pink fish ∼ salted fish spoiled from lying in salt too long.
pipsi (pipshy) ∼ powder-cured fish with fresh seal oil and cranberries.
poor john (jack) ∼ 1. salted and dried codfish, watered so much that it tasted fresh. 2. ill-cured maggoty fish shipped to poor consumers.
pressed ∼ When salted codfish was dried, it was pressed down by a weight of heavy stones. The salt was sweated out.
Puerto Rico ∼ a grade or cull of dry, white, salty fish slated for the Puerto Rico market.
red shanks ∼ cod having too little salt or damaged salt. This results in red fish: “refuse” (well below standard). The cod was once taken to Barbados as food for black slaves.
screwed fish ∼ dried codfish pressed tightly into a cask in a screwing room: a place in a merchant’s premises.
scrod (scraddlin) ∼ a smaller-than-usual codfish with the sound bone removed. It is left to dry overnight and then fried.
ship green fish ∼ fish salted and stowed, not dried.
slip fish ∼ cod that is split, washed, heavily salted, and left undried.
soft cure ∼ salted codfish that has a short drying time.
Spanish fish ∼ extra thick, salted fish with an amber, even surface, thoroughly clean on the back and front without showing salt. It was seven-eighths dry and merchantable, the highest grade of fish. It was shipped to Spain and Portugal.
stockfish ∼ an early term for dried codfish shipped to Europe.
talqual (telqual, talis qualis) ∼ a system of evaluating fish for market by taking “the good with the bad.” It was a method fishermen knew well and hated when they had a catch of good fish.
thirds ∼ a low grade of fish (next to West India fish, the worst grade), excessively thin, very rough surface, badly split, over-salted, slightly cracked on the surface, and sunburned.
throw out ∼ to make fish by washing the split and salted cod and placing it in sun and wind to dry, turning it now and then.
waterhorse fish ∼ fish washed of its salt and left to drain before it is spread in the sun to dry.
West Indies fish ∼ the lowest grade of dried codfish targeting the West Indies market.
wetsalt ∼ fish salted and stored in barrels until the salt becomes brine.
Then it is washed and eaten.
The child, playing on the floor,
didn’t notice
her mother’s hurried glances out the window
on her way through household tasks,
scud clouds drawing her like a magnet,
but when the mother turned from housework,
and pulled on long rubbers
the child ran to get her boots
and grab her mother’s hand.
Another child chased her heels,
on the way along a dusty, pot holed road
down hills, up hills, down paths to the cove.
Blobs of rain hit hard against their faces before they came to where fish flakes
stood on a cliff, holding netted bough beds
where fish lay like ivory leaves in summer breezes.
The children helped gather the fish,
pack them, pile on pile, in serrated circles
under canvas sails and coverings stitched from flour bags.
That done, they hurried home
close to their mother’s heels.
My mother was a weather watcher
unable to always predict changing climes.
As she got home
the sun came through a cloud,
like a great eye under a bushy, raised eyebrow,
promising sunshine to dry wet fish.
But there was bread rising
over the pan like rolls of fat
ready to be kneaded into smooth loaves
to rise, be baked, fill open mouths . . . .
My mother’s loyalties were so defined
they cut through the middle of
everything she did.
The seal was known to Newfoundlanders in times past as a swile. Many families longed to see seals come in to a cove on spring ice at a time when root cellars and parlours were almost bare of food. Swiles provided rich nourishment that saved many Newfoundland lives, especially the vulnerable: children and pregnant women.
There are 15 species of seal. The five main varieties of seals are howks, harps (harp pattern on the back), hoods (distinguished by a white moveable piece of skin on the head which the hood blows up for protection), bedlamers, and square flippers.
archangel ∼ a seal smaller than a hooded seal.
barrel bitch ∼ a female seal that has never had pups. She grows as big as a dog seal and when her pelt is in good condition she is in great demand.
bay seal ∼ at one year this small one-year-old non-migratory seal is called a jar seal. At two years it becomes a doter (dotard). At three years it is spotted like a leopard and called a ranger.
beater ∼ a harp seal grown past the whitecoat stage. It is a migratory seal beating its way north. A beater grows to be given the name quinter or bedlamer.
bedlamer ∼ a year-old harp seal with a spotted coat. As it ages into its second spring, a white coat gets buttoned up the back with black spots.
blackbacks ∼ old seal dogs in their fourth year.
bleater (nog-head) ∼ an undernourished harp seal pup.
cat ∼ a newborn seal, sometimes stillborn. It is fat and weighs about 25 pounds. Hats were once made from such a seal.
courier ∼ a hood seal in its third year.
doter ∼ a small non-migratory seal. It is sometimes skinned by turning its skin inside out and making its seamless skin into a nunny bag (a knapsack used to pack food for a trip).
gun seal ∼ an older seal usually shot with a gun.
gunswails ∼ native seals that breed upon rocks during the summer season.
hair seal ∼ a seal valued more for its oil than for its fur.
half-moon harp ∼ The old male dog has a dark mark on its back: a broad, curved line of connecting spots, starting from each side.
harbour seal (a bay seal) ∼ It stays around coastal areas all year.
hood, pup ∼ This seal loses its coat before birth. It has a slatey-blue collar. The hood family lives farther east than the harp seal. Its mother is a bitch and its father is a dog. The father blows up the hood for protection. The dog hood and the bitch hood are the most dangerous seals.
hopper ∼ a lively hood seal in its second year.
horsehead seal ∼ a seal with a grey hood with a long head and mane like a horse; the nails on its flippers are twice as big as those on a harp seal.
howks ∼ one of the main five varieties of seals.
jar, double ∼ an old jar seal. It breeds in late June and molts in mid-August. The bottoms of seal boots are made from the old harp whose skin is thick. The legs of seal boots come from the thin-skinned jar. These seals live in dens on the ice until it breaks up and then they move into the bays.
jinny ∼ a third-year harp seal that acts as a sentinel for the herd, warning it of danger.
kasigiak (Eskimo) ∼ a small bay seal hunted by the Eskimo always in the same places. It is the seal most adaptable to different environments.
lazarus ∼ a seal that remains on the coast later than the harp and arrives there earlier in the spring.
nog head ∼ a long, slinky, fatless seal whose mother died when it was young.
paddler (peddler) ∼ a two-week-old seal.
quinter ∼ a seal ewe in her third year.
ranger (dotard) ∼ a small, beautiful three-year-old spotted seal. It is a common seal that breeds, unlike other seals, in mid-June and molts in August. Older rangers are called dotards and are good at concealing themselves.
rusty jacket ∼ a second-year harp seal whose coat is rusty-looking. Its rounded spots have not yet opened into the harp shape.
saddleback ∼ a four-year-old black-back seal.
saddler ∼ a mature harp seal (male or female) with a dark stripe on each side from the shoulder to the tail, leaving a muddy white stripe down the back.
seal-cat ∼ a newly born seal.
selkies (Irish) ∼ seals.
sheeter (shader) ∼ a young seal spotting a sheet of ice.
silver jar ∼ a ringed seal.
smallagem ∼ a mature, large male seal.
smutty ∼ a smutty-nosed harp in the stages when its fur becomes dark. A seal just forming its saddle. It has a black head, a black nose, and a spotted body.
southern patch ∼ a concentration of harp and hood seals breeding on ice floes on the northeast coast of Newfoundland.
square flipper (phipper) ∼ a large animal weighing as much as 500 pounds. It is sometimes caught in nets as it frequents the north as far as Davis Inlet.
turncoat ∼ The harp seal is born creamy white. In 16 days it sheds its hair, and becomes a ragged jacket.
turner ∼ a third-year saddler.
voyage seal ∼ a migratory harp seal.
whitecoats (white jackets) ∼ baby seals in their prime at 10 days old and about 70 pounds. If there is no snow falling to give them a soft bed and nourishment, some of them perish. They are the harbinger of a thick patch of seals.