Throngs of swallows dipped low to the water and skittered past the clump of fishermen, grouped like sleepy commuters at the end of the dock. Ernie Eldredge peers into a driving rain as he pilots his trap boat back to Chatham. For 30 years, this has been Eldredge's routine.
Weirs predate the hook and the net.
Using wooden stakes pounded into shallow rivers and estuaries, aboriginal peoples all over the world figured out how to trap schools of fish, stranding them at low tide. Early settlers patterned their weirs after European models. Their design has changed little in 500 or more years. Rising out of the shallow waters of the sound, the weir looks ritualistic, a wall of hickory stakes leading to a circle of stakes topped by a cat's cradle of ropes. In the spring, migrating schools of squid, scup, butterfish and mackerel and other schooling fish swing close to shore, running up against a wall of nets.