Captains vary techniques to maximize catch

While numerous commercial fishermen groundfish with just one method, such as dragging or gillnetting, throughout the year, Capts. B.G. Brown, 37, of Gloucester and Mike Leary, 44, of Hampton Falls, N.H., multi-task groundfish techniques to get the best returns from their annual fishing time at sea.

These seasoned fishermen, who work out of Gloucester, reveal their favorite fishing method, along with its pros and cons, as well as those of the others.

Second-generation fisherman Brown began fishing about age 8 and has since fished inshore and offshore.

"I've had my own boat (the 31-foot Kathryn Leigh) the last five years," said Brown, who is helped by crew Nick Richon and Kirk Wonson, both of Gloucester. He now begins the golden inshore fishing period — Dec. 1 through March 30 — gillnetting and ends it longlining or "hooking." Fish are at their best in terms of quality and usually boat price during this time between ground closures.

Gillnetting

"Gillnetting is way less work than hooking. It's pretty much for cod. You get to spend more time with the family and less time at sea with gillnetting," Brown explained.

In areas where significant mobile fishing or dragging occurs nearby, gillnetters like Brown usually set their anchored and buoyed strings of the 300-foot-long by approximately 15-foot-high barrier-type monofilament gillnets up on the harder bottoms which most draggers stay away from and where the fish often congregate.

"The gillnets have to be set overnight," Brown said.

Consequently, the Kathryn Leigh crew gillnet early in the day, leaving the dock around 5 a.m., traveling less than two hours to the grounds, then hauling enough of the gillnets to get the 800-pound daily cod limit before re-setting them and lastly returning to port, often before noon, with the cleaned catch.

The captain controls the boat and hauls in the gillnets at the rail nearly amidships, while crew clears the nets around a center table and re-sets them off of the stern. Gillnetting requires no baiting, and the fish are already caught by the time the vessel arrives on the scene. Nets cost about $300 each. Inshore nets this time of year also have to be equipped with $65-apiece pingers to ward off porpoises.

"Gillnetting is more efficient (than longlining) when the fish are around," Brown said. Just two to three nets were often needed to catch 800 pounds of cod last December. The cod have since gotten smaller and scarcer.

"Traditionally, the gillnetting slows down in February when the water cools. The fish are less active, and you have to set your gear right on them. With netting, if you miss it (the fish), then that's it," he explained.

Longlining

Fortunately for Brown and crew, haddock showed up inshore in early March.

But catching haddock meant switching gillnets for snap-on longline gear that requires baiting and fishing nights.

"You are pretty much excluded from the haddock fishery with gillnets. You won't catch haddock with 61âÑ2-inch mesh in gillnets unless they are big fish," Brown said. Six-and-a-half inches is the minimum legal mesh size allowed in nets. Conversion from gillnetting to longlining took these fishermen about a day.

The haddock have also been residing on the smoother "dragger bottom." Brown and crew have gotten around this by fishing nights when most of the day-boat dragger fleet returns to port. "You make a set on the dragger bottom, and you make it quick," he explained. The crew often lets its longlines set three hours or less before hauling it. "We have been putting in 15- to 20-hour-long days," Brown added.

"At least with hook fishing, you can catch haddock," he said. "There's also potential for a big day. With cod, you can only land 800 pounds a day."

Strings of longline gear have hundreds of hooks, sometimes at 6- to 9-foot intervals. Fish like haddock often come up "hook-n-hook" when they are feeding and abundant. Haddock especially savor pieces of squid and mackerel. Brown figures the cost of one of his hooks, along with its gangion, swivel and snap hook, to be about $1.

"I like the cleanliness of the hook fishery," Brown said. "If NMFS offered you some break, I would fish with hooks only. What little by-catch (often undersized fish) comes up is alive, and we can watch it swim away. Longlining also doesn't destroy habitat."

He and the crew have, however, taken several hits with their fixed gear.

"We had some dragger tow away $4,000 worth of nets on 'the hour and 40 minute ridge' (a hard-bottom fishing area off Cape Ann) one night," he said. "This is an area that draggers have rarely ventured on before."

Recently, the crew further lost 300 hooks to another dragger that towed through one of their longline strings.

"The risk of getting towed away gets greater as the fishing technology for draggers improves. The line between dragger and fixed gear bottom is more and more gray," Brown stated.

Dragging

On the other hand, Mike Leary, known as "Bat" or "Sea Bat" by most of his peers, alternately works gillnetting, longlining and even dragging with his two approximately 50-foot vessels, Lori B and Pamet.

"This is the time of year you definitely want to be dragging. The water's cold, and the fish don't move much," said Leary, who is serving his fourth year as New Hampshire's councilor-at-large on the New England Fisheries Management Council.

Dragging — new territory for Leary — is just what he has been doing most of this winter right off Cape Ann with his dragger Pamet, which he acquired a couple of years ago.

"It's been just Joe (Joe "Stoga" Scola) and me," he added.

Leary hired the veteran offshore and inshore draggerman and former vessel owner to captain his boat. "This has been a learning opportunity for me, especially learning the twine (how to mend the net)," Leary said. Scola has also been teaching him the inshore dragging tows. The two have been netting haddock, cod, yellowtails, dabs and greysole during two-to-three-day-long trips.

Their dragging method's gear, like the net and trawl doors, can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Unlike gillnets and longlines, the drag, or otter trawl, can snag many fin and shellfish species at the same time. This equipment also can get torn up or, even worse, completely lost on shipwrecks while being towed.

"I've been offshore 20 years. It's neat to be dragging when you can see land," Leary said. He has gillnetted most of those years. Leary used to make day trips 50 miles or more offshore in the Gulf of Maine with his original speedy 47-foot Lori B, a unique aluminum catamaran fishing vessel. But, fuel economics forced him to replace that vessel with the much more economical approximately 50-foot Lori B, the former Lady Shannon out of Gloucester, which he now uses for gillnetting and longlining.

"I go gillnetting offshore for monks (monkfish), greysole, and lobsters in the summer now. I go with a minimum of two other guys. Gillnetting is very selective, but it's the most ineffective fishing method if the fish don't move," Leary said.

"Dragging is definitely easy on the body," he said. "Gillnetting is physically very labor-intensive. You stand there (while working the gillnets at sea). After 25 years of standing, your shoulder goes first, then your neck, and lastly your hips."

The dragger does most of the work fishing, and its crews at least usually get some rest time between tows.

"I like hooking the best. It's a neat fishery; it's clean," Leary said.

For the past couple of years, he has converted his gillnetter to hooking with a Mustad auto-line system to cash in on the October 15 to January 31 Special Access Program for haddock in Closed Area I offshore.

Only longlining for haddock is allowed here. "There are no gear conflicts then," Leary said.

His longline system even cuts the bait — frozen squid that sells for 80 cents per pound — and baits the hooks. "You can set three hooks a second baited with it," Learysaidd.

Leary works three additional crew while longlining. They generally set an hour and a half before slack tide and haul an hour or longer after the tide turns. "You get the fish on the first six hours. You get nice fish. We do five tides a trip. This involves a lot of hours on your feet, but that's free time. You use B Reserve days in this program," he explained. Groundfishermen's Days at Sea yearly allotments are divided into A and B days. B days can only be used to participate in programs like this or catch only healthy stocks elsewhere.

Unfortunately for Leary and his crew, their last haddock season was "...disappointing because of the Canadian haddock that flooded the U.S. market."

"There was no price," said Leary.

The haddock boat price even dropped to about 70 cents per pound one time during this period.

Gloucester lobsterman Peter K. Prybot writes weekly for the Times about the fishing industry and related issues.

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