Alewife warrant article a relic of bygone days

Long about now – high summer – the mackerel run in the harbor to the delight of young fishermen who line the dock, perching on the floats like seagulls waiting for discarded bait. What the boys do with the mackerel they catch is anyone’s guess; there are rumors some folks around here actually eat the greasy fish. More than likely the mackerel are fed to Maine coon cats, which may account for the cats’ legendary heft.

You can smell the schools of mackerel no matter which way the wind blows or how thick the fog. Just like you could smell the herring that once filled purse seines in the cove, attracting gulls and cormorants.

Now, whether you can smell alewives when they’re running is a mystery. Smelts, maybe, but alewives, who knows, since nobody mentions them any more.

Unless it’s town meeting time, and then an annual article on the warrant asks voters whether they want to exercise their rights to alewife fishing and to “authorize the Board of Selectmen to establish a Harvesting Plan for Alewives” for the current season.

Why, when there are not any alewives? Dunno. But every year the warrant article draws debate – and guffaws – before it is approved. The town always supports its rights to alewife fishing; that’s just the way it is.

Charles Haywood’s “Yankee Dictionary,” published in 1963, explains everything:

The alewife, a member of the herring family (so it probably does smell) lives most of its adult life in the sea, returning to fresh water to spawn in April and May. American Indians awaited the spring alewife run to enjoy the season of easily caught fresh fish, and the early settlers caught on quickly. They used nets and salted the catch down in barrels.

“Since unregulated man can destroy the sources of his own wealth,” Haywood wrote, “the states have enacted statutes to prevent the people from catching the entire spring alewife run.”

What apparently evolved was for towns to auction the privilege to set nets to one person, requiring him to close his traps on alternate days so half the alewives might reach their spawning ground. In those days, a state conservation officer inspected the operation. The townspeople were allowed to take enough fish for their personal use, including enough extra to have one alewife in each hill of corn for fertilizer.

According to Haywood, towns constructed channels with a “Y” in them and nets were set in only one branch, thus permitting half the fish to swim safety upstream.

Here’s the kicker, according to the “Yankee Dictionary”:

“Many Yankee towns still have their alewife runs, although here and there an ancient stream has been so obstructed or polluted that the instinct of the fish tells them to avoid the locality.”

We, in towns where an “Alewife Harvesting Plan” becomes an annual joke at town meeting, should seriously look at our freshwater streams and determine if the alewives – or anything else – smell.