Gloucester Magazine                           Vol. lV No.1
                                                                                                                    Winter 1981
    The Michigan Bears
                                                                                         By William D. Hubbard
The fishing method of gill netting originated long ago in Norway but arrived in Gloucester 70 ago by a most roundabout route. In the hazy, humid pre-dawn of August 14, 1910, five small boats slipped out of the harbor at Charlevoix, Michigan, and began a voyage destined to shape the future of every man aboard. The little fleet, not a vessel over 35 feet in length, would sail more than 2,200 miles eastward in the next 24 days. While the men headed out across Lake Michigan, their wives and children left the waterfront and returned to lakeside homes and farms to await the return of their men in the spring.
The acknowledged leader of the expedition was Captain Albert Arnold whose Mindoro led the group. With Arnold aboard Mindora as crewmen were Oliver (Cy) Tysver, Herman Tysver and Gerry (Mike) Shoares. The Hope, Weasel, Prince Olaf and Eagle followed, skippered by Jack Genet, Ed Weiderman, Sam Halberson and John Nordrum. In all, some 20 pioneer fishermen left Charlevoix that day bound for Americ’s most famous fishing port, Gloucester, Massachusetts. There, these inlanders would introduce gill netting to the skeptical Yankees.
The men from Michigan were all experienced in Norwegian-born gill netting. Many of their fathers had set these nets in the Skagerrak and North Sea before immigrating to the American Midwest in the early 1800’s. Although the U.S, Fish Commision sponsored successful tests of the gill nets in Ipswich Bay in 1880-81, and Gloucesters’s own Captain George Martin took the Northern Eagle netting in the winter of ’81, the locals remained chary of new ways. It remained for the tough little crew from Michigan to prove that gill netting was a viable fishing method and to write another page of Gloucester’s prominent fishing history.
Fishing on the Great Lakes in the seasons just prior to 1910 had gone from bad to worse. Always a tough way to make a living, it became nearly impossible when the whitefish failed to school in their usual locations.
While facing bleak prospects for the coming season, Arnold and the other men learned of the Fish Commission experiment. Bill McInnis, the young Midwestern salesman for Cape Ann Net & Twine Co. who sold them their gear, was popular with and respected by the Lake’s fishermen. On several trips to Charlevoix, he urged them to follow up on the Commission’s experiment by putting their proved netting methods to work off Gloucester. Also Booth Fisheries Co., a Chicago fish processing firm, had recently opened a plant in Gloucester. They too urged the men to try it. It was either stay at home with little hope of a good catch or gamble their skills in new waters.
The little fleet passed south of St. Ignace and through the Straits of Mackinac late the first day. Good weather held and they sailed south, entering lake St. Clair and the Detroit River and on into Lake Erie. At Buffalo, New York, they entered the barge canal and proceeded east to its juncture with the Hudson River at Troy. From there it was a fast passage downstream to New York City and their first taste of salt spray as they ran out through Hell Gate and into Long Island Sound.
When the little boats left the sheltered waters of the sound at Montauk and entered the North Atlantic, Captain Arnold set a course ENE across Nantucket Sound for the outer cape. (The Cape Cod Canal was under construction but would not open for shipping until 1914.)
On September 27, they rounded Race Point, slipped into the shelter of Provincetown Harbor, and put ashore for the night. Mooring their boats on the edge of the beach, everyone enjoyed a night ashore only 20 miles from Gloucester. But rising the next morning in anticipation of a quick passage to Cape Ann, those Michigan lads has quite a surprise, the five little vessels they had moored at bayside last night were now over 100 feet from the nearest drop of water! It took a little thought and the endurance of some good-natured ribbing from the Provincetown folks before they realized they had just experienced the effects of the ocean tides.
On arrival at Gloucester next day, they lost no time in rigging their gear and preparing the nets for the winter’s fishing. Each gill net was 50 fathoms long by two fathoms deep, a fathom measuring six feet. Nets were made of flax twine and had six-inch mesh openings, or six-inch “mash” in local parlance. Fifty round glass floats buoyed up the top edge and as many bricks held down the bottom of the net. Three nets were strung together to form a “gang”. The end of each “gang” was moored by a 14-pound trawl anchor, and a flag buoy marked each end on the ocean’s surface.
The “mash” opening was designed to allow a fish to swim only part way through before being stuck. On attempting to back out of the opening, its gills became caught in the twine, providing the name “gill net”. Six-inch “mash” was latter increased to eight when the cod and Pollack of Ipswich Bay proved to be larger than the fish of the Great Lakes. Regulating the openings allows for smaller fish to swim through and escape and while the while the larger fish are caught.
Albert Arnold cleared $12 a week in the Mindoro in the winter of 1910-11, an average figure for the five boats. By spring, the new venture was deemed a success and the men headed back to Michigan to pack up and move families and households to Gloucester before the next season.
Despite the Gloucestermen’s misgivings about the effects of undertow and tides, the inland fishermen had proven that gill netting would work. Soon, local captains put their trawl tubs and jigs ashore and rigged up with the floats, gangs and leads of the gill netter. Many a struggling fisherman on Lake Superior and Lake Michigan heard of the success of the men from Charlevoix and headed east that summer. With boats and families, they left their homes in Charlevoix, Bear Island, Mackinaw, St. James and Manistee and headed for Cape Ann. The Lasleys and Joneses ad Places were joined by Dahlmers, Lafonds and more Tysvers, all bound for Gloucester and a new future. Most settled on Rocky Neck and in East Gloucester near the bustling piers and wharves of the inner harbor.