Pogie: A Fishy Tale
Dawn. Captain “Dickie” Newcomb hands the wheel to Derek and clambers up to the foredeck of the Janie-O, scanning the water off Chebeague Island in Maine’s Casco Bay. We pass by a flock of darting terns who drop like stones into the shallows and emerge moments later, their beaks brimming with baitfish. A harbor seal surfaces, its coal-black eyes watching us impassively. A half-dozen merganser ducks rhythmically dive, reappear, and swallow their catch. We are not after striped bass, or mackerel, or cod, or haddock. We are not bird-watching or pulling lobster pots. We are stalking pogie (Brevoortia tyrannus), a filter feeding, foot-long member of the herring family.
Dickie raises a hand to shield his eyes as the sun peeps over the horizon. A cigarette dangles from his mouth. He is painfully bowlegged. His mustache is white with flecks of brown and he has not shaved in several days. He points to a school of pogie dimpling the water’s surface thirty yards to starboard and says, “I see a bunch of flips!” I pull myself up on the gunnel for a look but see only flat water. Dickie climbs back into to the wheelhouse and points out an oval density on the scanner mid-way between the surface and the bottom. “Most of the school I saw is too deep. If we set the net, they may escape out the bottom before we can close the seine. We’ll have better luck if we can find a ball of fish at the surface.”
The Janie-O is a wide-beamed, wooden, 34-foot 1980 Novi with a 135 Ford Lehman diesel engine. Her hull is painted blue, and piled on the deck, behind 17 empty barrels and a half-dozen crates, is a 450-foot-long seine net. Captain Newcomb is relatively new to pogie fishing but has dreamed of having his own fishing boat for years. “I have $52,000 into the boat gear, and after last year, I own it all.”
Melton, a slender, wiry younger man, balances a cigarette on the edge of his lips as he carefully folds the net so that it will play out safely over the stern of the Janie-O when it’s time to make a “set.” He has fished for two seasons; his friend, Derek for one. Since the pogie fishing season lasts only two months, the men also roof houses for Captain Newcomb on Peaks Island. On a sloping roof or on the deck of a pitching fishing vessel, strength, endurance, and agility are essential.
Back in the pilot house, I note that I can barely see through the front window. Salt water has seeped in along the edges and a thin, gray fog reduces visibility. Instead of gazing over the wheel, Captain Newcomb alternates his attention between the overhead sounder and the flat water off to starboard. I point to a dark shape in the lower water column at 35 feet on the sounder and he glances at the image. “Maybe a sturgeon. Too big for a seal. A few weeks ago, we had a sturgeon, what? six, seven feet long, come up with a load of pogie.”
I offer up what I know about pogie. “I was looking through an issue of the Working Waterfront and read that a crew caught a 600-pound tuna in their pogie net. It’s amazing to know what’s feeding on these fish so close to shore.”
Captain Newcomb raises an eyebrow. “Where’d you read that again?”
“Working Waterfront.”
“I don’t think so. Shallow water? Tuna? Sounds like a tall tale.” We continue on.
In the western Atlantic, pogie traditionally range from Jupiter Inlet, Florida, to the Maine coast, sometimes appearing as far north as Nova Scotia, Canada. Dark blue or green above and cream-colored with a hint of yellow on the sides, the trout-sized fish have a conspicuous brown, thumbprint sized dot behind the gill opening. Pogie feed on microscopic algae and plankton by moving slowly through the water column in tight schools with open mouths and gill openings spread. On a calm, windless day, it’s not unusual for a careful observer to see not only dimpling on the water’s surface, but to hear a low-frequency slurping sound.
Because Atlantic herring is said to “hold up better” in bait bags, herring is the preferred bait by Maine lobstermen. But with its lower cost and increased availability, more and more lobstermen in Maine consider pogie a reasonable second option. This has not always been the case. Maine is at the northerly range of the fish, and there are years the migrating schools simply never reach southern Maine. When they do, they represent a feeding bonanza for predator species such as sharks and eagles, ospreys, bluefish, and striped bass, and are a lucrative source of income for pogie fishermen like Captain Newcomb.
The oily fish has other commercial uses. The fish are rendered into fish meal for the pet-food market, and are a valuable source of Omega-3 supplements for humans. Purse-seining for pogie, if managed conservatively, has the added benefit of having minimal effect on the environment, compared to, say, ground fishing, which may create widespread disturbance in the seabed.
Even where pogie are traditionally abundant, such as in Chesapeake Bay, they are susceptible to overfishing. With advances in sounding and improved techniques in fishing, it’s possible to catch every last pogie in a school of 20,000 fish. I once asked a lobsterman why the lobster fishery seemed so, well, primitive. You hand bait a single trap, throw it overboard, wait several days, and pull it up. He thought for a moment before answering: “If we were more modern, we’d catch em all.”
In 2012, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission classified pogie as overfished. Stricter quotas have led to a rebound in pogie populations, but their numbers continue to be closely monitored. As the Gulf of Maine has warmed in recent years, the fish now regularly appear in Maine waters. In 2024, Maine’s quota was set at roughly twenty-four-million pounds with a limited season stretching from mid-June to mid-August.
Behind the wheelhouse, the open deck of the Janie-O leaves little room for maneuvering. If we fill our seventeen barrels with pogie, at roughly 500 pounds per barrel, we will fill our quota for the day. That is, unless Captain Newcomb receives a call from Portland that the quota has been reached and we need to immediately stop fishing. Off to the north we see another seiner slowly circle a school of pogie. We can be picky, but not too picky.
Captain Newcomb draws on his cigarette. At seven am, the sounder picks up another good-sized mass of pogie at a depth of ten-feet. Moments later, the blurry image of another school edges onto the screen. Our captain climbs up to the foredeck, scanning the water. “There, now that’s what we’re looking for! Let’s see if they ball up. Patience is a virtue. We’ll hit them if both schools ball up together.”
We idle a short distance away, and miraculously, as if one cue, the two schools merge on the sounder into one larger mass. Captain Newcomb grins, “Okay boys, let’s get to work. It’s time to make some money.” Derek and Melton pick their way to the stern and slowly play out the net as the Janie-O slowly encircles the school. Abruptly, Captain Newcomb snubs out his cigarette and throws the Janie-O in reverse when the edge of the net catches on the stern near the propeller. Derek and Melton lean over the rail and free the net. I wonder: do either of them know how to swim?
The men play out the net in big graceful drapes. At regular intervals, a buoy splashes into the water to maintain the top of the curtain above the waterline. It is hard, delicate work. Captain Newcomb adjusts the hydraulics. One overhead wire controls the drum through which the cable to the net moves; the other provides power to the scoop which he alone will tend. When the circle is closed, Captain Newcom attaches a 200-pound leaden weight to a steel line, and the three men throw it overboard, closing the bottom of the seine, and with luck, capturing most of the fish.
The overhead hydraulic pulls the net slowly in. Derek and Melton lean over the side and pull the leading edge of the net aboard and pin a series of pegs into the gunnel to prevent the net from slipping back in the water. At first, it’s unclear if we’ve caught any fish. Then, as more and more of the net is muscled aboard, the fish come to a boil on the surface, thrashing against their neighbors. A few leap over the far edge of the net, but only a few. Seagulls and osprey wheel overhead. Merganser ducks stalk the outer edge of the net, picking off injured escapees.
Captain Newcomb dips the hydraulic-assisted net into the school and swings it aboard. Melton and Derek flip several blue barrels over and turn their heads away as the captain tips the net above the barrels. It rains pogies. Fish scales adhere to every surface. Then things get hectic. Abruptly, Captain Newcomb runs back to the pilot house, and picking up a hammer, whacks the edge of a metal turnoff valve, switching the hydraulics back to the overhead drum, pulling the net further in. A few minutes later, he repeats this maneuver, and we’re back to the hydraulic net. Clang! We’re off the net. Clang! We’re back to the net a 300-pound-barrel brimming with pogy is shoved and spun to the far side of the deck by the crew and an empty barrel takes its place. I have a job. It is to pick up stray, flopping pogie from the deck that have missed the barrels, and toss them in. There are many pogie on the deck. I find that if I kneel and crawl about on all fours, I’m successful, to a point. It is an oily, slippery, job. Over the next hour, all 17 barrels fill with pogie. In one glorious haul we have met our quota.
On our way back to Peaks Island, I join Captain Newcomb in the pilot house. He flips on the marine radio. “I have to report my catch by 11:30 am or I get fined.” With seventeen full barrels, at the dock, he’ll make a good chunk of cash today. Some days, some weeks, the men search all day and can’t locate a school or the pogie slip away. The diesel motor may need repairs. The hydraulics may balk. One moment you’re riding high, the next, the boat springs a leak.
Derek sits down on a crate to rest. Melton leans over the side-rail to catch his breath. In the last hour and a half, both men have lifted and pushed and pulled their way through the equivalent of a half-marathon. No, that’s not quite right. I think, watching the men pivot and shift, dart and glide, the image of a madcap dance comes to mind. Captain Newcomb slowly grinned and rubbed a knee, “This is a young man’s business. Derek and Melton? They don’t know but they’ve got some roofing to do.”