HOOK, LINE AND SINKER

The nets have been drawn in and the big fish tug docked for the last time, and the Greens, commercial fishermen in Grand Bend for four generations, have sadly watched an era come to a close.

Close to 100 years ago, Joe Green's great-grandfather set about building a strong commercial fishing business that could hold its own among the many other fisheries springing up along the Lake Huron shoreline and in the Grand Bend area.

In those days the waters surrounding the small hamlet of Grand Bend were teeming with fish of all kinds, especially herring and whitefish. Great grandfather Green's modest venture

enjoyed a fair degree of success, with the eight months between spring thaw and winter freeze-up spent rowing out the seine nets, setting the large looped meshes out along what is now the famous Grand Bend beach, and hauling in the crop.

Many of those who fished for a living only did so part-time to supplement their income. Cyrus Green, Joe's grandfather was one of those fishermen who fished and farmed at the same time. Imagine the amount of backbreaking work it would require to row out and set the seine nets along the beach, and then pull them in at night, stuffed and overflowing. The nets were so heavy with fish that Cyrus Green had to harness horses to the nets and use horsepower to haul them in. Then imagine returning home to take care of the farm on top of all of that.

The next improvement in the techniques of commercial fishermen was the pound net. Joe explains how the fishermen would drive huge stakes into the lake floor and set the pound nets around them. "The tough part of it was dragging the stakes. They were as big and heavy as telephone poles," he says. The men would use a scow to pull on ropes from the fish tug in order to lift a big cement weight into the air. Then they'd let go of the ropes and allow the weight to fall, driving the stake into the lake bed.

When all of the muscle-straining work was done, the pound nets, which were "funnel-shaped affairs" in the words of Joe Green, would work quite effectively. The fish would swim into the net and not be able to find their way out. All that was left for the hearty fishermen to do was to pull a boat up, bring the nets up close to the surface, and scoop in the payload.

As time wore on and the technology of commercial fishing advanced, the Canadian Department of Fisheries clamped down on the number of fishing licenses it issued. Most of the farmer-fishermen didn't have their licenses renewed. Henry, Joe's father and the third generation of Greens to fish The Bend, concentrated his efforts solely on the fishing end of things. He made an adequate enough living from the business to support his small family, but he watched as one species of fish after another succumbed to new and deadly forces which were being introduced into the waters of Lake Huron.

Part of the problem was, and is, the pollution of the Great Lakes and surrounding waters. But another force that Joe feels is responsible for the depletion of fish species indigenous to the area is the stocking of exotic species by private angling organizations. Spike herring were a big commercial industry - until the coming of the smelt. The introduction of the smelt was

the factor largely responsible for killing the herring industry in the area. Biologists determined that smelt living in their natural oceanic environment preyed upon herring eggs. In fact, the herring eggs were the smelt's main diet. It's no wonder the herring population in the Great Lakes was wiped out by this voracious fish.

Brown trout, skalmania trout, coho salmon, chinook, Atlantic salmon, pink salmon, smelt, alewives, splake - all of these salmonoids are foreign to the Great Lakes. And they seem to be a lot more trouble than they are worth. "This stocking is changing the natural ecology of the lake," Joe Green states.

One fish species suffering greatly from the flourishing of the salmonoids is the perch. The perch was already in trouble because vital links in its food chain were being killed off by the ever-increasing stream and lakeshore pollution. Joe recalls when minnow, a major source of food for perch, used to be so thick that they would turn streams black with their colour. Today (1989), the minnows are few and far between. Perch also feed on night-crawler-like worms, about four or five inches long. "I haven't seen one of those for fifteen years," Joe says. And a last link of the perch food chain which has all but disappeared is the crab. "We hardly see a crab anymore. At one time they used to be so thick that they'd come up in the nets," Joe remembers.

The lake trout has been wiped out, and this can be directly attributed to the large number of lamprey eels which slipped through the Welland Canal and into Lake Huron. But Joe Green does commend the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) for trying to overcome that problem with the introduction of the hybrid splake (a cross between lake trout and speckled trout). But there is one major problem with the splake: it won't reproduce itself.

The problems surrounding the commercial fishing industry have certainly increased since the years when Joe's great grandfather first began to fish this area. And, unfortunately, the number of fish inhabiting the Great Lakes is on a rapid decline. In June of 1987 the two factors combined and forced Joe Green to make a very painful decision. The commercial fishing business, begun so many years ago by his great grandfather, had to fold.

While he had entertained the notion that one day his son might be able to keep the family tradition going for a fifth generation, Joe now realizes that that is "an impossibility." As many other commercial fishermen working out of Grand Bend have found, small commercial fishing operations are simply no longer viable. Joe has sold his boat and all his fishing equipment to a larger Sarnia operator.

But why did Joe Green get into this trouble-ridden business in the first place when he already knew of the pitfalls that awaited him? Sitting back in his white deck chair, Joe looks pensive.

"You're always waiting for that big catch. It's hard to describe why. There's such a challenge to it. Every day is the same, but every day is different."