People and Pogies

This summer I looked down from the Halibut Point promontory at what seemed to be sport fishermen on the bay below, not so far from a commercial netting operation.

I assumed they were trying to catch game fish like stripers, bluefish, or tuna attracted to their favorite food, pogies. No, the anglers were pulling up the pogies themselves. I wondered how these guys could get plankton-eaters to bite on a hook.

Eric Hutchins, Fisheries Biologist at NOAA, helped unravel the story. Eric advised, "They do only eat plankton. They way you catch them is to simply cast a 3 way treble hook into the dense school of menhaden and they are snagged. They don't try to eat the hook." Sure enough, a close look at this photos revealed the hook had lodged in the skin behind the fish's head.

After awhile the bait catchers zoomed off across Ipswich Bay toward Plum Island where they evidently planned to target desirable sport (and culinary) species.

Meanwhile, the menhaden (pogey) fleet was busy offshore.

Three sizes and specialties of boats coordinated the capture of the densely schooled pogies: net-carrying and handling vessels, skiffs to quickly surround the fish with a purse seine, and a floating 'factory' to haul the catch onboard.

A spotter plane roamed over the Bay directing the operation.

As the net was hydraulically tightened around the captive fish they were sucked aboard by a vacuum pump and conveyed below deck on a belted trough.

The handful of 'fishermen' efficiently completed the harvest and departed for their processing port in southern Maine where the pogies would be rendered into oil, fish meal, and fertilizer.