10,000 Pounds of Bluefish

The May, 1985, Universtity of North Carolina Sea Grant newsletter, Coastwatch, published an article about Ocracoke Island fishermen, Sullivan and Uriah Garrish, titled "A Heritage Founded on Fish" by Sarah Friday. One paragraph describes fishing before WWII:

Sullivan Garrish and his brother, Uriah, admit that the fishing and bragging came easy sometimes. "We used to catch 14 and 15.000 pounds" in a day, says Sullivan. "There was a lot of times when we couldn't bring them all in in our boats." He recalls one trip in particular when they had to get another boat's crew to help them pull10.000 pounds of bluefish out of their gill net. The old-timers agree commercial fishing is not easy work. Sullivan said he and Uriah were out before sunrise every morning, weather permitting, from May to October. After netting all the fish they could catch, the crew took several hours to cull, clean, salt and pack the fish in barrels for shipping. Not much fresh fish was sent from the island then. And occasionally instead of shipping their catch the islanders would swap the fish for a load of vegetables from the mainland.

You can read the full article here. 

This month's Ocracoke Newsletter is the story of Mrs. Godfrey's ghost who haunts the Island Inn/Odd Fellows Lodge. The story is taken from Chapter Three of my book, Digging up Uncle Evans. You can read the account here: https://www.villagecraftsmen.com/mrs-godfreys-ghost/.