In The Field — Dip Netting Alewives

Each spring there’s a phenomenon taking place in our coastal river mouths that, despite having taken place for millennia, has never been witnessed by most of our residents. The running of the alewives.

Alewives, a species of anadromous river herring, live much of their lives in salt water but are born and spawn in freshwater ponds and lakes. Each year they make a spring migration from the sea into the rivers and brooks to reach the still-water where their young will be born.

There’s a tradition of dip netting them in the rivers or brooks as they make their annual journey. Historically, these bony fish were used to fertilize maize plants — a single fish being buried at the base of an individual plant — and it’s thought this technology was taught to early European settlers by those who’d lived with and worked the land before their arrival.

While they’re edible, their intricate, tangled network of small bones makes them a challenge to consume fresh the way the fish we typically eat are enjoyed. Last season I brined my alewives in sea salt and maple sugar before basting them in birch syrup and putting them in the smoker over hickory chips. The flavor was delicious, but eating around their bones was a near impossibility. I ate all 25 of them, albeit somewhat begrudgingly.

This year, I was determined to render those bones edible through the use of my pressure canner.

Here in Maine, dip netting for Alewives is allowed Sunday through Thursday during the run, which gives the fish a few days a week to pass through the gauntlet of recreational and commercial dip netters — commercial harvesters sell their alewives into the lobster bait market — ensuring that more than enough fish make it to their destination to spawn. This is crucial to the maintenance of the resource, which has already been significantly impacted by dams and other impediments that keep them from reaching their ancestral spawning waters.

On the recreational side — which includes “subsistence” fishermen like myself — each licensed harvester is allowed 25 fish per day. During peak run that only takes about 5 minutes to achieve, as many dips yield multiple fish, particularly as you start understanding how to approach the water and how to use your net judiciously.

Once home each fish is scaled, gutted, headed, and cleaned thoroughly before being placed into pint mason jars.

Next they go into the pressure canner. For those unfamiliar, a pressure canner allows you to cook in water at temperatures above that of boiling water. Think of it this way; at normal pressures (sea level), heated liquid water reaches its boiling point at 212º F before evaporating as steam. However, if you increase the pressure, forcing that water to stay a liquid longer, you can bring the liquid water to higher temperatures. This is our goal, canning our fish at temperatures high enough to destroy botulism spores and to dissolve those pesky small bones.

Canning is more of a science than an art, so for food safety reasons, recipes and cook times are followed exactly. In this case it was 100 minutes at 10lbs of pressure. This yields a cooking temperature of 240º F.

After this they’re allowed to cool and the jars seal themselves. Then I label them and place them on a cool, dark shelf in my basement to be eaten in the time between this year’s harvest and next!

A lot of folks that fish consider themselves “anglers”, which — due to the fact that it’s a reference to fishing with a rod and line — seems like a bit of a narrow definition to me. While I do like to “angle” I also like to spearfish, and in this case, fish with a net too.

So, the annual alewife harvest is just one reason I consider myself a fisherman — rather than merely an angler!