The fishery has always been the lifeblood of Grates Cove, From the time of the first settlers to the Cod Moratorium of 1992, the fishermen worked in the inshore cod fishery. Mainly using small boats, they used hook and line, baited trawls, nets and traps to harvest this resource from the sea. A few schooners from Grates Cove fished the Labrador in the summer months and in 1885, a schooner under the command of Ebenezer Vey went to the Grand Banks.
Even in the 19th century there were ups and downs in the fishery, with some years yielding better catches than others. Each year, however, followed the same pattern with the cod fishery getting underway in May and continuing until September. the last two weeks of June and the first two weeks of July were considered to be the peak of the season and was when the most fish was landed. This was because the cod were chasing the caplin inshore and time labor intensive period was called the "caplin skull".
The main method of catching cod up until the early 20th century was hook and line. This involved baiting a hook with caplin or squid and lowering it into the water to entice the fish to eat the bait. This type of fishing involved long hours, often from the wee hours of the morning until the evening. Since the fish had to be salted before it could be sold in those days, the fisherman's work was not done once he reached the shore. Then the painstaking job of splitting and salting the fish began and women usually helped out with this job in the stages. It was not unusual to find crews working in the stage long after dark.
The following pictures are of the inside of a replica stage . The shutters are closed in this picture, but during the fishing season they would be open to the fishing boat below. Since the stages were located on the top of the cliff, it is quite a distance from the boat to the stage. A steel cable would extend from the stage fastened to an anchor in the water. It extended over the roof of the stage and was anchored in the ground and had to be really taut. There would be a hoisting engine in the stage and one or two fishermen would have to be in the stage. A tub on a pulley would be attached to the steel cable and lowered to the boat below. The fishermen in the boat would fill the tub with about 200- 300 pounds of fish. The fishermen in the stage would hoist the tub up through the opening, using the hoisting engine and dump the fish into the holding pound shown in this picture. This process would continue until all the fish was removed from the boat.
Then once the boat was secured on its moorings all the crew would assemble in the stage. One fisherman would keep loading the fish into the small section on the side of the splitting table that you can see in the following photo. This involved several duties. One fisherman cut the throat, another would take out the liver (which was kept and will be discussed later), remove the stomach (gut) and the head. He passed the fish to the fisherman standing on the side of the table where you see the cleat. This person was known as the splitter, who would remove the bone, called the sound bone, from the fish. Then the fish was dropped into a butt of water and thoroughly washed. From the butt, it was taken to the far end of the stage, where it was laid in a pile and heavy salted. It was left there to cure for about two or three months until it was ready to go to market.
This is what a hoisting engine looked like.
In the earlier years stages were built as close to the water as possible. During the winter, with the wind blowing in from the ocean, many of these stages were wrecked and had to be rebuilt in the spring. At this time, the fish was also shipped to market by schooner, so having the stages as close to the water as possible made it easier to load these larger boats.
With the coming of the road and the use of trucks to bring the fish to market, fishermen began to build their stages back from the edge and save themselves a lot of work in the spring.
There were no women fishing in those days, so the term fishermen actually does apply. It was no only considered unladylike for a woman to go fishing, but it was also considered unlucky and a fisherman would never allow a woman or girl aboard the boat when he was going fishing. The only time women did go in boat was for a leisurely Sunday ride.
Read about the other methods of fishing that were used in Grates Cove. Up until the time fishermen could sell their fish fresh from the wharf, the methods of salting and curing cod fish were the same as those described above.