The Village Squire, 1981-07, Page 6Fishing for a living
Lake Huron's McLeod family
by Dean Robinson
It's high noon.
Sunlight glistens brilliantly off the Lake
Huron water.
The man on the AMC car radio
mounted overhead says it's time for the
day's Good News, a regular feature on
CKNX-AM, out of Wingham.
But aboard the fishing tug Ferroclad
there is little in the way of good news.
The morning's catch has amounted to
less than 15 pounds of precious perch, the
fish that mean the most to the men who
live off the water along Huron's Canadian
shore.
About three hours of hauling in almost
4,000 yards of gill nets and the take won't
cover the day's fuel, forget about the
other costs and labor.
Days such as this aren't new to Captain
Don McLeod, the last of a family that has
been fishing out of Bayfield for a century.
Closing in on his 52nd birthday, McLeod
has been working the lake for about 30
years, following in the bootsteps of his
father William John and his brother Jack.
"The water seems to go dead around
here every spring." says McLeod, "just
after the farmers are on the land. I don't
know what it is. We used to get junk fish
(suckers, smelt, alewives) but we're not
even getting those anymore."
For McLeod and his fishing colleagues
(three others out of Bayfield, eight or so
out of Grand Bend, and a couple out of
Goderich) there has been a downward
trend for the past few seasons, and that
usually prompts a migration to other
waters, often Lake Erie. But times are
tough down there as well.
"In order to be a fisherman you've got
to like it," says McLeod. "There are
better jobs, easier and better payin', and
the young fellas aren't much interested in
it anymore. Sometimes you do pretty
good at it but other times it can be pretty
skimpy. You can earn a good living when
things are right."
Ideally, whitefish are plentiful in the
spring and fall, and perch in the summer.
Ideally, the work week averages six days
and the take per day is 1,000 pounds. And
ideally, the season runs from mid-March
to the end of December, and sometimes
into the first couple weeks in January.
But in the last few years everything has
been less than ideal.
"You go to where they used to be, or
where they should be," says McLeod,
who doesn't pretend to have an extraord-
PG. 4 VILLAGE SQUIRE/JULY 1981
inary fish sense. He has, instead, a quiet
canniness that has developed not from
any textbook, but from three decades on
the lake. As with an accountant, teacher.
factory worker or baseball pitcher, some
days, some seasons, are better than
others. Fishing can be as cyclical as any
other profession.
The wheelhouse on the Ferroclad is
jammed with makeshift bunks, tools,
depth (fish) sounders, a radar unit,
compass, VHF radio, marine clock,
barometer, auto pilot, eight -track tape
player, a Loran C (the ultimate navi-
gational tool), books such as The
Fresh -Water Fisherman's Bible (Evanoff)
Freshwater Fishes of Eastern Canada
(Scott), and A Guide to the Freshwater
Sport Fishes of Canada (McAllister and
Crossman), binoculars, plastic plates, a
stool that's bolted down and, of course,
the wheel.
Operating the 45 -year-old, 65 -foot,
steel -hulled, Port Dover -built tug is
second nature to McLeod. He knows her
every inch, including her GM 671 "old
standby navy surplus" diesel engine that
kicks out about 200 horsepower.
As he squints out across the bright, flat
blue, his ears automatically turn off the
musical offerings of CKNX and tune in
the voices coming from the VHF's
channel 6. They're the voices of other
fishermen, familiar voices, often with
predictable messages. On this day there
is a general bemoaning about the lack of
fish. "If somebody's gettin' 'em, I'd like
to know who it is," says the voice,
"'cause it sure as hell ain't us."
"We generally look after ourselves and
one another," says McLeod. "If she's
blowin' pretty fresh and you break down,
we'll generally come out after each other.
That's when life and locker are on the
line. When it comes to where the fish are,
well, that can be a different story. "You
ask some of them how much they've got
and they'll change the subject," says
McLeod, "or tell you half of what they've
got. Fishermen are know to be liars. They
don't always tell the truth."
As McLeod tries to decide where next
to set the nets (which will stay there for
two or three days), his crew of three
finish cleaning up, grab a smoke, or eat
some lunch. There's Bob McAuslin, the
oldest, an electronic technician who
prefers life on the lake. There's Alex
Collins, who has fished most of his young
life. but mostly on Erie. And there's
Preston Todd, the rookie who has the
knack of being able to learn in a hurry.
Few orders are given. Few are needed.
The men work as a team and they work
until all the work is done. The Captain,
because it's his boat, his company, his
investment, gets the whale's share of
each day's catch. The crew members
divide the rest. Today there's nothing
much to divide but McAuslin and Collins
have been this route before. They prefer,
however to talk about better times, weeks
in which they took home in excess of $800
each. Those times, they hope, will return.
But in good times or bad, fishing is
fishing and you can't pull unless you set.
Sometimes the setting is in vain but still it
must be done. Fairweather crew mem-
bers are not tolerated.
Among the assortment of nautical fun
plaques that decorate the wheelhouse of
the Ferroclad is one that reads, "I'm the
Captain of this ship and I have my wife's
permission to say so." The wife in this
case is Kay McLeod and, though she no
longer fishes, she is a woman of presence
when it comes to McLeod's Fishery.
Among her many duties is operation of
the company's fish shanty on the north
side of the Bayfield River, near its mouth.
Out of the shanty, which is actually a
bright, new storage house and retail
outlet, she and employee Linda Clements
sell fresh whitefish, perch, pickerel,
trout and salmon (in season). Some of
them are being caught on the McLeod
boats (there is also the W.J. McLeod, a
45 -footer which was the first steel boat
built by Matheson Boat Works in
(ioderich back in the fall of 1945) and the
rest are purchased from other fisheries.
The bulk of the McLeod catch, however,
winds up in Detroit, New York or
Chicago.
The McLeods also sell smoked fish.
which Kay prepares with a mixture of
molasses, salt and brown sugar, and a
fire of corn cobs. It's a taste treat that has
caught the fancy of many of Bayfield's
Sunday sailors. Also for sale at the shanty
is fishing bait (spawn bags, worms. etc.)
for the sporting fishermen who tiock to
the area regularly.
The working life of the McLeods is not
for everyone. A lighthearted love of the
sea can die hard on a bleak, bone -chilling
December morning when the low dark
clouds and the icy swells come together
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