Cape Breton's Magazine

JOHNNY MACINNES CONTINUES FROM PAGE 41 whatever we had on this date went. We al? ways cleaned them out twice a week. We'd go to Big Bras d'Or with one of these mo? tor boats. There we'd have to help loading the trucks. Then come home. This was all after fishing. And we'd have to go with those lobsters regardless the kind of day it was. Have to go some pretty bad days, foggy and everything else • but we never had any disaster there. (Was this a co-op?) No, fishermen were shipping individually. There were several companies buying in Boston. The first ship? ment that I made, the fishery officer came to the shore and he wanted to see the lob? sters • I don't know why. I think it was just to see if there was spawn in them, to dump them, to try and discourage us from shipping to Boston. (They didn't want you to do this?) No. Anyway, when the lobsters were put back in the crates, they took a scale to the edge of the water • it was l40 pounds that went in each crate. At that time I would have got $5.60 for those lob? sters here (selling to the canning fac? tory) . But I remember yet that I got 33 dollars clear for those lobsters I shipped to Boston. Sometimes the return was poor • but not very often. (I should think people that owned lobster factories weren't too happy to see you sending the lobsters away.) No, they weren't. But after I shipped those lob? sters, D.B. (MacLeod, who owned the lob? ster factory at Breton Cove) • he told me, "Now, I want you to come and tell me what returns you get for those lobsters." So I went to D.B. and I showed him the returns. He came to the shore and he told the fish? ermen to start shipping the lobsters, that he couldn't pay that kind of a price for them. There wasn't many shipped that year, but the next year again there were quite a few. After that, we here learned how to look after the lobsters. We'd band them as soon as we'd get them out of the trap,i.and they weren't biting each other. We do that now. There are still some fishermen that don't look after the lobsters. I don't know, there should be a law, I would think, that you should have to look after it. If you had a bunch of hens and went out and just slammed the eggs in a basket and you didn't care if they'd break or not • that wouldn't be a very good way to make money in the poultry business • but that's the way some people handle lobsters. The most damaging thing of all: say you have fish in a crate • like mackerel • and not clean that crate just as clean as you can • and then put lobsters in it in this dirty state • that's what kills lobsters altogether. Bacteria in that old black fish. Cleanliness is the most important thing in looking after live lobsters. Get those crates in water and clean them. There are some people that throw old bait in among the lobsters • those lobsters don't live. Today, we never put a lobster in a crate there has been bait in. We used to long ago but I found out that it was wrong. And keep the temperature right • don't let them get too warm....So if it's a hot day, ice is very important. When we are fishing, whenever it's warm, when we fill a crate we dump it overboard and tie it to a swing till we're ready to go in. When I started, the lobsters weren't near as plentiful as they are now. There wasn't half the lobsters. There were several rea? sons for that. The spawn lobsters weren't protected at all. They were taken. There We Buy and We Sell and We're as Near as your Telephone Sid's Used Furniture Phone 564-6123 436 Charlotte Street, Sydney *S • aeilleiB a'plMsas daoine ri ittsan Ftemnung'' Honey Tr?ro and Tataaafouche' Nova Scotia C & 6 MadEOD LIMITED Books on Caoe Breton Gape Breton, photographs by Owen Fitzgerald 9.95 Miners and Steelworkers by Paul MacEwan 12.95 Cliffhanger -House, David Dow 5-95 Patterson's History of Victoria County . I3.OO The Littie Boats, Ray MacKean & Robert Percival 12.95 Highland Community on the Bras d'Or by P.J. MacKenzie Campbell 5.50 Mail Orders 361 dicnrlotto Sfrwl - P. O. Bm 658 SYDNEY, NOVA SCOTIA A Specialty