www.relishelgin.ca saves a huge amount of physical labour over the manual one that it replaced. Still, the process of bringing in hundreds of yards of line and fish requires hands-on manipulation as each section is loaded into bins. The morning’s work of unloading the lines, maneuvering the bins, and removing fish from the nets would be considered a good workout by anyone. “Are you going to bring us luck?” says Harvey as we reach the first net at around 7am. As it comes up, the disappointed look and exclamation of, “Junk!” tells me the answer. For the next 2 ¾ hours, Harvey sits feeding the line across his lap, removing hundreds of Sheep Head Fish with a little hooked tool, empty line going back into one set of bins, fish into another. Harvey mentions that there are extra hooks available if we would like to try it. One advantage of the roar of the motor is that you can pretend you don’t hear. Tim finishes reeling in the line and joins Harvey at unloading the lines. The catch of a few white perch, silver bass and pickerel is worth maybe $50. I protest that we are not responsible for luck on nets set the day before—hopefully their catch the next day was better. The fishermen are more fortunate with the second line. It holds far less fish, but they are almost all yellow perch. The mood takes an upswing as the process of reeling and unloading the lines goes quickly. Tim resets the small mesh net,
FOOD & DINING
feeding 1500 yards of it out over a contraption out the back of the moving boat—he obviously has this down to a fine art. The boat is hosed down, records made, fish weighed, catch report filled out and dropped in the little metal box on the way into har-
bour and we arrive back behind the fish store at 12:30 am. This has been a short fishing day—it gets considerably longer in the summer. The motor is shut down with a welcome quietness, and the fish is unloaded. Brenda is waiting back at the store. Tim takes a quick break, then heads back to work preparing the fish for sale. The process is mechanized with some pretty fancy looking equipment, and much speedier since the purchase Continued on page 104
Relish Elgin Magazine • Summer 2008
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