In my years of culling fish I would say Ship Harbour did the best with the fish per crew, but we always took the most fish out of Murray's Harbour because there were more crews fishing out of there. Of all the places I culled fish, Nelson and Norman Poole of Murray's Harbour always had the biggest fish. They would have some big old gaffers. They had a trap berth up by Spear Point and they would catch some lovely fish there. I would say half to three quarters of all their fish would pass for large or extra large.

The most fish I culled in one day was three hundred quintals. That was down to Murray's Harbour in Gordon Penney's stage. Culling was not an easy job. Sometimes fisherman would argue over the fish or try to trick or bribe you. I dreaded going into Murray's Harbour to cull the fish. You see most of the people in Murray's Harbour were related to me. People would try to get me to give them a better grade or wanted me to cheat on my tally card. I was always a honest man when I was culling fish. I took great pride in my work, tried to be as fair as possible and always culled everybody's fish the same.

I remember one year I did really good with the salmon. It was in the 1970's, I am not sure of the year. That summer I was fishing with my brother Nelson. We were fishing out of Murray's Harbour at the time.

We only had one salmon license between us at the time, so we were only allowed to set out 4 nets which had to be 50 fathom each. We only had 3 salmon berths that summer. Our best berth was Fish Herring Point. We always did good at this berth so we had 2 nets strung together there. Our next berth was Shoal Point and our last berth was Fish Island Point. All of these berths were close together. They were no more than a minute's ride in motorboat from each other. These were all good berths and we usually did well in all of them.

The reason why I did so good with the salmon this particular year was because the ice was in. Actually, the ice was offshore a ways but you could see ft. The salmon were caught between the ice and the land. There was little space for them to swim and no place for them to go besides in towards land where our nets were waiting for them.

You always had to keep a close eye on the ice. The ice was off a ways from land, but if we got the wind blowing on land the ice would come in shore within a few hours. The ice situation was like a roller coaster. When the wind blew off land the ice would go out. Then we could set our nets. Then when the wind blew on land the ice would come in and we had to take our nets up. It was like that most of the summer. We had to wake up most mornings 5 or 6 o'clock to go out and haul the nets in case the ice was coming in. Sometimes the ice would get the better of us and some of our nets would be torn up. I remember sometimes we would be taking up our nets and the ice would be only a few hundred feet away from us. The salmon would be pushed in to land. As we would be taking up the nets salmon would be striking them trying to get away from the incoming ice. It was quite a sight!

Most times when we hauled our salmon nets that summer we would get about 50 or 60 salmon per haul. Sometimes we would get more, sometimes we would get less. It stayed like that for most of the summer. There was lots of salmon on the go and everyone in Murray's Harbour was doing really well.