The Hudson
The Rivers of America Series
by: Carl Carmer   Illustrated by: Stow Wengenroth

CHAPTER 31

The Silverbacks Are Running

The poles are usually in shallow water too far out of the main traffic-filled channel to catch many fish, yet they give the city fishermen their only chance of capturing some of the countless shad that go up the river to spawn every April. Long before any white man ever came to this continent the people of the Hudson valley knew that spring would bring them all the fish they could eat. Even in these times between two and three million pounds of shad are taken from the Hudson each year.

The fishermen to the north--at Nyack, Grassy Point, and Cold Spring, at Marlborough, Milton, Came- lot, and Poughkeepsie--look on the pole-set nets with contempt. The only way to catch shad, they say, is to go out in a boat and chuck a gill net overboard at the beginning of a tide. At the end of the tide, if the net has been weighted so that it fishes about twenty-five feet below the surface, you’ll have some shad.

The few times I have fished for shad I have been lucky enough to be with Johnnie Allwater. Johnnie comes from the river town of Highland, as his father did before him. He’s always been a pretty independent fellow and he left home when a boy to see something of the world. But he has never liked being far away from fishing. In the old days Johnnie used to follow the shad run right up the coast--the St. John’s River in Florida, a little later the Albemarle in North Carolina, and then there would be a run on the Delaware. Coming north with the spring was pretty nice and a good living could be made especially when Johnnie was lucky with the roe. Some seasons his shad would be all bucks and the whole kit and kaboodle not worth as much as a smaller catch the next year when the roe would be running strong. Now that Johnnie is over sixty and has a boy in high school he stays closer home, though he is as strong as ever and doesn’t look a day over forty-five.

The first time I went out with Johnnie was on the earliest of the really warm mornings of May. I had wandered in warm sunlight down to the river flats between the Mid-Hudson Bridge and the railroad bridge at Poughkeepsie. I sat on a rock for a while and listened to a quarrel between two men who were trying to decide whether to buy a pint of cheap whisky with the proceeds of the last shad they had caught or set their short net for another drift in the hope of making enough to buy a quart apiece. Soon one of them started for town. He was back in an incredibly short time with a bottle from which considerably more than half the contents was already missing. That led to another wrathful controversy which went on until they had piled the net into their boat, embarked rather unsteadily, and were singing lustily on the glittering water.

"They git that way and stay that way for two months every year," said a voice beside me and I looked up into the sharp, tanned face and clear blue eyes of Johnnie Allwater. "Catch just enough to keep ‘em practically unconscious the whole spring. They git a real good time of it fishin’ and drinkin’ and drinkin’ an’ fishin’."

"I'd like to go out just to see how it’s done," I said. "The fishing part, I mean. I’ve never fished a river with a net."

"I’ll take you for a short drift if you want," said Johnnie. "Best time is at night. I’m just down here mendin’ net--wasn’t plannin’ to go out and we won’t catch much fish but I’ll take ye."

"I’d be glad to pay," I said, but with the quick generosity I later found characteristic of him Johnnie waved aside the idea. In a half hour the outboard motor on his flat-bottomed boat was pushing us steadily upriver. Johnnie had acquired a crew, a young man named Henry who was "taking the day off from high school to row for somebody." We had not far to go. A few yards above the railroad bridge Johnnie stopped the engine and Henry took the oars.

"We’ll start here on the ebb," said Johnnie, "and we’ll get a drift downriver to Marlborough." He stood in the square-built stern and lifted the end of his net from the box in front of him. Tied at regular intervals along one edge of the net were long cords with rectangular white blocks of wood at the ends. Tied close to the other edge were metal rings.

"White buoys are best for a night drift," said Johnnie. "Fancy-colored ones are better in the daytime but I don’t do much day flshin’." He threw the first length of net into the river and I heard the plop of a ring and the skittering splash of a wooden block.

"These new rings weigh five ounces," said Johnnie, turning in deliberate rhythmic motion to the net. "Carry the net down a little further, hold it a little straighter." (Plop, splash.) "These buoys are tied to the top semline on cords about twenty feet long. When they’re restin’ at the surface they’re eighteen feet apart. Limit you can set is two thousand feet." (Plop, splash.) "The Coast Guard watches to see you don’t set no more. I’m only settin’ two shot this time.

"How much is a shot?" I said.
"'Bout eight pounds. Fellows around here set about three shot most o’ the time."
"That big farmer that was below us last night," said Henry, rowing slowly with as steady a beat as a metronome, "he’s got more darned shot than anyone on the river."
"He ain’t got more fish," said Johnnie.

It seemed a long time, and was probably about fifteen minutes, before Johnnie stopped his rhythmic dance--bending over the box, straightening, letting the net fly out over the water with a quick upward lift, throwing the buoy and its long line out away from the boat. As the last one dropped into the water Johnnie seated himself with a sigh.

"Now we can take it easy," he said. "Got time to whitewash a ton o’ coal if we want to."

For a half hour, then, Henry rowed us along the line of white buoys to make sure that the net was not tangled anywhere. By that time it had begun to drift with the ebb tide and was already under the railroad bridge. We stretched ourselves on the wide seats in the sun and waited. I was dozing comfortably twenty minutes later when I heard Johnnie speak in the low, tense tone that fishermen use when their unseen prey begin to make their presence known.

"She’s fishin’," said Johnnie. I looked in the direction his forefinger indicated and saw a white buoy slowly disappear below the water. It bobbed up again and again went down.

"There’s another," said Henry, pointing to our far left.

"She’s a-fishin’, she’s a-fishin’," said Johnnie, and I thought how many times he must have said that before in his life and yet how great his present delight was.

"Dark tide is better," said Johnnie. "Sometimes a bright sun like this drives ‘em too deep for the net."

A ferryboat bore down on us bound from Highland to Poughkeepsie.

"Won’t she ruin your net?" I said in alarm.

"Not her," said Johnnie, waving an arm at the man at the boat’s wheel. "She don’t draw enough water but the pilot won’t go over the net anyway. Nice fellow-always goes out of his way.

As he spoke the ferry veered off downriver for some distance and then turned toward the Poughkeepsie dock.

"Don’t the big boats bother you sometimes?" I said.

"Once in a while. ‘When they do, they sure raise hell. Cost you more’n fifty dollars to get your net fixed after one of them has cut it up. Don’t happen often, though. Sometimes a sturgeon will go through your net. The river used to be full of ‘em but they don’t run any more--just one or two in a year. A shad net won’t hold ‘em, though."

"How many shad do you get on a drift?" I said.

"Depends," said Johnnie. "Last year was a good year and we got four or five hundred. I got an order for thirty-five hundred shad at forty-five cents for roe and twenty-five for buck. Nine days later I delivered ‘em. The fellow says, ‘I’ll take fifteen hundred more.’ Know how long it took me to catch that little reorder? Two whole weeks."

The ferryboat was at the Poughkeepsie dock and a few boys were daring the cold waters of early May, swimming around it and shouting. An old man rowed about near the dock in a seemingly aimless way.

"Old feller’s dredgin’ for coins," said Johnnie. "A few years ago a fisherman that lived up on the high bank there took to comin’ down to the dock after dark and folks that lived near enough could hear him throwin’ things into the water. They thought he’d gone crazy at first, an’ then one night some kids spied on him and managed to figger out by the light of the little flare he was usin’ that he was dredgin’ the bottom. around where the day boat’s been comin’ in for about a hundred years. You know how the boys swim around and holler for passengers to fling ‘em coins to dive for?"

"Yes," I said.

"Come to find out, he’d picked up between two and three thousand dollars in the first two weeks he’d been at it before anybody got wise to what he was doin’--that is, countin’ in the price he got for two or three old coins that collectors paid him hundreds of dollars for. Now everybody on the river’s got a little dredge of his own. I’ve picked up some extry dollars that way myself. There’s somethin’ about the waters around here that turns nickels black. I save all I get to play in slot machines at a sort of club run by a friend o’ mine down near Germantown. I took a whole bag o’ nickels down there an’ he says to me, What you doin’ now? Makin’ any money?’ 'Yeh,’ I says, 'I’m makin’ money but I can’t seem to make it come out the right color,’ and I throws that bag o’ black nickels on the bar. You ought to seen his face!"

A swift cabin cruiser painted a brilliant red slid by us and Johnnie waved his hand at the man on its high bridge-then shook his head.

"Carp boat. Nice Jewish fella runs it. He’s on the river too early this year. Carp ain’t runnin’ yet. When we catch a carp in our nets we string it overboard to keep it alive till he shows up. He’s got a big tank o’ ice water on that boat--uses his engine to make the ice somehow--and he buys the live carp from us and slings ‘em into that tank. When he gets a tankful he takes ‘em downriver to the Jewish butchers in New York. You know there’s somethin’ in the Jewish religion about how their butchers have to get the fish alive or it ain’t no good. The Jewish ladies stuff carp and make some- thin’ they call 'gefilta fish’ out of it."

"It’s time to eat," said Henry. "My mother always puts up twice as much as I can eat, all except pie, and you’re welcome to help yourself."

"I got more’n plenty too," said Johnnie.

"I’m glad," I said, and the three of us began devouring sandwiches, coffee, and pie.

"Tide’s changing," he announced. "The net’s goin’ back."

"Row up to the near end," said Johnnie, "and we’ll pull ‘em in."

A few moments later the first yards of net were in the boat and Johnnie was carefully bringing over the side the first shad of our catch. Its gills were entangled in the net and Johnnie had a hard time extricating it.

"It’s a roe," Johnnie said excitedly. "That’s a good sign. Damned if this one ain’t as pretty as one o’ them early silverbacks."

"How can you tell a roe?" I said.

Johnnie held up a sturdy, beautifully curved fish about two feet long. Its scales were lavender and silver and they gleamed in the sunlight.

"There’s a bulge below the belly," Johnnie said, "just behind the dorsal fin. A roe ain’t got the red of a buck neither." He began pulling the net in slowly, pausing now and then to speak sharply to Henry about keeping the boat at the proper angle. Shad after shad came over the side and went into the fish box in front of me. I looked down on a treasure that shone with purple, silver, red, lavender, white. When the last bob- bing buoy had been gathered we counted the catch.

"Forty-five roe and thirty buck," said Johnnie. "Not bad for goin’ out late on a daytime ebb. I’m gettin’ forty cents a fish for roe and twenty for buck. What I ought to do is get a partner with a good truck and peddle ‘em through the town. You can get a dollar apiece for good roe if you do it that way. Sellin’ to butchers you don’t make so much."

As Henry rowed us back to the little line of shacks and short gray piers at the river’s edge a group of young boys passed us, two of them rowing in hearty unison for the west bank.

"Scapping for herring," said Johnnie.

"Want to know how?" said Henry, with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Why, yes," I said, "I guess I do."

"You have to have one live herring to start with. You put a safety pin through his lip and close it. Tie just four or five feet of line to it and tie the other end to a pole. Set your net in shallow water about eight feet down. Then when you see a school of herring playin’ along the surface you drop your bait herring right amongst ‘em and make him act crazy. If they’re goin’ round one way, make him go round the other. Make him act like he ain’t got sense at all. Pretty soon all the others’ll begin wonderin’ what he’s actin’ that way for and they’ll begin followin’ him. Keep him actin’ crazy but ease him along until he’s got ‘em all right over your net. Pull up then-and you’ve got a mess of herring."

A crowd meets every boat when it puts in at one of the little piers-butchers, other fishermen, folks who like to sit in the sun and listen to fishermen. Johnnie and Henry and I stepped out proudly and busied ourselves getting our catch into Johnnie’s little icehouse.

"Here," said Johnnie, suddenly holding out two of the largest roe, "take these home to your missus."

"I’d like to," I said, "if you’ll let me pay for ‘em."

"Can’t do that," said Johnnie shortly. "Tell her to cut ‘em in the back o’ the neck to bleed ‘em. Then wipe ‘em off with a cloth. Fry ‘em in olive oil until they’re about the same color as my net there. I dyed that net with oak-bark tea so they couldn’t see it so good. When they’re about that color take ‘em off and eat em."

"I’ll tell her," I said.

"If she bakes ‘em instead, tell her to empty the belly and fill it up with vinegar and sew it up. The vinegar melts the bones."

"I’ll remember," I said.

"You better come back soon and take a night drift with me," said Johnnie. "It’s mighty pretty and peaceful on the river at night."

"Nothin’ prettier than shad scales in the moonlight," said Henry. "They shine like the blue lamps you see in theaters sometimes. And it’s nice to watch the lights of the houses on the banks go out and then come on again early in the morning. Once in a while a big boat goes by with lights in her cabins. Don’t forget to come back."

"I won’t forget," I said, and I have not forgotten.