On a chilly day in November, three fishermen are patching holes in a large trap net spread out on a field in Little Compton, Rhode Island. The catching part of the season is long over and in a few more days, so will the four months of net mending and repairing. It’s all part of the seasonal rhythm of trap net fishing, one of the oldest methods of commercial fishing in New England, with origins dating back to Native Americans. At one point in the late 1800s, more than 200 fish traps lined the shores of Narragansett Bay and the state’s south coast.
The Wheeler family owns two of the last trap companies in Rhode Island. Come spring, they’ll set their floating nets, one off Newport and the other off Sakonnet Point, which in May will swell with tens of thousands of scup, or porgies. These silvery fish are good table fare and sold fresh to local markets, with the bulk shipped to the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan. A large scup can reach 20 inches and weigh 4 pounds.
I’ve been out on the water twice with the Wheelers in the last 10 years as a dozen crew hauled up their nets by hand—pulling twine, as it’s called. The catch is sorted, boxed, iced and loaded into a waiting truck at Sakonnet Point. The work is physical. When the spring run is at its peak, the crew may work as many as 60 consecutive days. “It’s scup every day. In the spring, it’s like Groundhog Day,” says Corey Wheeler Forrest, 46. She manages the family’s business and does everything from pulling twine and mending nets to selling the fish.
In the simplest explanation, a floating trap works like an enormous lobster trap, guiding and funneling fish from scup to striped bass to butterfish into a net parlor from which they can’t escape. It’s considered one of the cleanest commercial fishing methods, since little fuel is burned and unwanted fish are released alive. “We’re definitely a clean fishery,” says Forrest.
And you never know what you might find swimming in the trap on any given morning. Last year, the crew caught a bluefin tuna weighing more than 300 pounds, for which it had a permit. The previous year a large bluefin spooked as the net was being raised, blew a hole through it and escaped.
DYING ART
Having twice seen the fishing process, I’m interested in watching the crew mend the nets as the season comes to an end. In a world in which artificial intelligence makes daily headlines, I’m not surprised to learn that rigging and repairing a trap net is a dying art, with the arcane knowledge needed for the most difficult aspects of the work concentrated in a handful of old-timers.
Fishermen like to fish, so asking a veteran trap man to move off the water and onto the mending fields was not always a welcome request. And since the move usually coincided with advancing age and declining physicality, field work was often seen as the last act in a trap fisherman’s life.
“That’s where you’d go to die,” says Forrest, who like all trap netters has heard that cliché plenty of times over the years. But Forrest, who works in the business started by her grandfather, is charged with seeing the big picture. That includes fixing holes in the nets, even the small ones. “The mending part is just as important as the fishing part,” she says. She began working on the nets the summer before she went to St.
Michael’s College in Vermont, where she graduated with a degree in English.
The field where Forrest is working today with two colleagues—Bob Malone and Brannon Winn—is not the metaphorical pasture it once represented when there were ample young men looking to fish and no shortage of older fishermen who knew how to fix or build a net. “The big problem today is finding help,” says Forrest. “It takes a lot of bodies to haul the big nets in.”
When Forrest started trap fishing, there were 12 to 15 people working the boats during the spring run. Last year, the crew had dwindled to eight fishermen. Seven, she notes, is the “bare minimum” for working a trap.
Earlier generations of old-timers held their net rigging know-how close to their vest, reluctant to share their secrets for fear it might one day cost them their jobs. Things are different today, in part due to the shortage of workers. Finding someone who can rig a trap net? Those are rare birds. The Wheelers have just such a doyen in Malone, 73, who fished commercially for 15 years, left for two decades to do other work, and then returned in 2010. Almost 40 years ago, Malone was part of a crew that built from scratch the large trap net that is stretched across the field on this cold November day. Malone helped build this one from start to finish.
“I was the youngest one by 15 years,” recalls Malone, who lives in Little Compton. “I was a rookie, just learning the craft. There were six of us. Five of them knew what they were doing. I was the pup.” He looks at the net made from enough twine to cover a football field and reflects for a moment. “There’s not much left of it that is original,” Malone says with a laugh. “We’re both in about the same shape.”
One of the men on that long-ago crew was a “master craftsman” in Malone’s words, who had learned the intricacies of net building from the father of well-known R.I. trap fisherman George Mendonsa. Mendonsa later sold his trap company to Forrest’s father. The degree of separation among fishing families is tiny in this state. As a member of the third generation in her family to fish commercially, Forrest appreciates that type of continuity. For her, the old net, which so many fishermen have helped stitch up, is an heirloom quilt. “My grandfather worked until he was 87, until the day he died. My dad will be the same way,” she says.
Her father, Alan Wheeler, 75, is currently at a mountain in New Hampshire, where he makes snow. This spring will mark his 65th year fishing. “I was 10 years old when I first made money off the water,” Alan once told me. He caught bay scallops in a small dredge towed behind a skiff.
As we stand in the field, I ask Malone what it takes to excel at the job.
“Patience,” he says. “You have to stitch up holes. Repairing holes is the most basic part of the job.”
That’s what the trio is doing on this day, but re-rigging sections that are tapered is much more difficult. Malone took notes on this net 40 years ago, when he was first building it. He wrote down measurements and put them in a folder. Two years ago, when he was putting a new bottom into a section of the net called “the kitchen,” he found those notes and the repair proceeded without a hitch.
“We’re lucky to have Bob,” says Winn, who has fished commercially for about 45 years. “He’s one of the last to know all the geometry.”
Winn, 70, relished the physical aspect of fishing from the start. “I always thought it was a wonderful workout,” says the URI graduate and lifelong surfer who also lives in Little Compton. “I believe every day you should do something to improve your body, mind and soul. Trap fishing covers all three. Now it’s ironic. I’m out in the fields.”
Forrest, while shouldering much of the responsibility for overseeing the family business, has come to enjoy working on the nets. “The fishing part, the trapping part and the selling part are stressful for me,” says the mother of two. “Net mending is not. It’s quiet and peaceful. People find it boring, but I enjoy being out here.”
With the crew shorthanded, she has spent more time working on the net this year than during previous seasons. And she knows what’s at stake. “There’s no one behind me,” Forrest says.
Winn respects Forrest for her work ethic, her sunny outlook, her willingness to help anyone on the crew and her desire to learn as much as possible. And then he added something that is hard to quantify, but also important. “She sees the poetry in it, too,” he says.
In the field, the three—Forrest, Winn and Malone—are far enough apart to work in silence. When they’re in closer proximity to one another, they talk.
“If it’s not windy, you can chat over 5 to 6 fathoms,” says Malone, who not surprisingly admits to having a “fairly” mathematical mind. “Ten fathoms, it’s uncomfortable.” He likes the work. “I find it to be a Zen experience,” he says. “I get lost in the work.” And, he adds, “I’m fine without talking to anyone all day. This is my retirement job.”
All three wear fingerless gloves. Winn sports a pink pair, which I comment on. He tells me they were the only ones left at the Dollar Store. And while Winn says he still misses the fishing part of the job, he also acknowledges the toll that lobstering, gillnetting, scalloping and trap fishing have taken on his body. Winn has had two hips and one knee replaced, both rotator cuffs could use repair and he’s got disk and back problems. He also has broken all the fingers on both of his hands twice, except for a thumb, which he broke only once. He does admit that he might have busted a finger or two in a bar fight or in a pickup basketball game, but who’s counting?
“Forty-five years, you blink and you’re an old guy,” he says. “Legs start to go. Or backs.” Would he do it again?
“I think so,” Winn says, “but I’ve never been accused of being smart.
This article was originally published in the March 2023 issue.
