Cod

“ Even the long and almost arctic winter with its seals and foxes detains hundreds. But, as a fisherman told me one day, while tossing upon the dock with his pitchfork a boat-load of cod, “It is a poor trade.” It is a little trying to patience to be rolling in this idle way, with the creak of spars and the rattling of blocks and rigging, especially as a breeze has been winging the blue water for an hour not more than a mile ahead of us. We do move a little, just a little, enough to keep the hope breathing that we shall soon move off with reasonable speed. ”

“ Nor were certain other fish stories, told by Sebastian and his successors about the land of cod, without some strange truths to build on. Cod have been caught as long as a man and weighing over a hundred pounds. A whole hare, a big guillemot with his beak and claws, a brace of duck so fresh that they must have been swallowed alive, a rubber wading boot, and a very learned treatise complete in three volumes—these are a few of the curiosities actually found in sundry stomachs of the all-devouring cod. ”

“ The cod increases its species most prodigiously, surfeiting itself upon hake, until the world is again menaced. The ocean might be converted into a mass of cod, for each one can produce as many as nine million eggs.... Mankind might be overwhelmed under the onslaught of the more fertile fishes, and the cod might maintain immense fleets, creating, besides, colonies and cities. Human generations might become exhausted without succeeding in conquering this monstrous reproduction. ”

“ When acres upon acres of the countless little capelin swim inshore to feed, and they themselves are preyed on by leaping acres of voracious cod, whose own rear ranks are being preyed on by hungry seals, sharks, herring-hogs, or dogfish, then indeed the troubled surface of a narrowing bay is literally thick with the silvery flash of capelin, the dark tumultuous backs of cod, and the swirling rushes of the greater beasts of prey behind. ”

“ Cod.—Cod, skate, maids, and thornback should be in a state fit to crimp, and are so when the fish rises again on being pressed with the finger. There are sixteen different species of cod taken on our coasts; but the most esteemed is the Dogger Bank cod.
This fish is best when thick towards the head, with a deep pit just behind it, and the flesh cuts white and clear. The fish should be perfectly stiff. This affords a proof of its freshness, and of its eating firm. [104] The gills should be very red, and the eyes fresh and bright; when flabby they are not good. ”

“ To Brazil and the West Indian Isles, Cod fish is sent in casks, pressed in by a screw; to the Mediterranean and home market it is shipped in bulk.
The Cod is a deep-water fish, rarely coming into the shallows; he is a voracious and almost promiscuous feeder. Unlike the Herring or Mackerel, it can scarcely be called gregarious; great multitudes, it is true, congregate together, but they seem not to obey any common laws of motion, shifting their places in great shoals, but rather each obeying the impulse of his own independent will, attracted by the abundance of food, or other causes. ”

“ It is to the stomach of this species that I am most indebted for many of the rarer of the testaceous and crustaceous specimens which I possess. (For the cod’s bill of fare see p. 284.) The cod is extensively fished for along this part of the coast, and may be termed the poor man’s salmon. Great numbers are salted and dried, and in that state sent to the southern markets. I have occasionally met with a cod of a red colour, in all save the fins, which are generally of a yellowish tinge, and never larger than a common sized haddock. ”

“ THE NEWFOUNDLAND COD FISHERY The cod is widely distributed in the northern and temperate seas of Europe and America. It lives close to the bottom, in from 25 to 50 fathoms of water, and feeds upon fish, small crustacea, worms and mollusca. The cod spawns in the Spring. Of the 4,000,000 or so eggs that are spawned by a single female cod, comparatively few are hatched, and fewer still reach maturity. The young are about 1 in. long by the beginning of the summer, and become fit for the market at the end of the second year. ”

“ Each female cod has more than 9,000,000 eggs, but the numbers are kept down by a host of enemies.
The most interesting species is the “Common” or “Bank Cod.” Though they are found plentifully on the coasts of other northern regions, such as Britain, Scandinavia and Iceland, a stretch of sea near the coast of Newfoundland is the favorite annual resort of countless multitudes of cod, which visit the “Grand Banks” to feed upon the molluscous animals abundant there, and thus attract fleets of fishermen. ”

“ A cod will not only live, but thrive well, in fresh water, if properly fed. A respectable fishmonger assured me that he had tried the experiment and succeeded, and offered to send me some live cod in a well-boat, for my piscatorium in Bushy Park.—Daniel—Jesse. ”

“ Here are the warehouses and the very primitive dwelling-places of the fishermen. The cod are caught with lines and with nets, which are baited with herrings or little metal fish whose gleam serves equally well to deceive the cod in search of food. At the favourable spots in the right season, the fish are so abundant that the fisherman has only to throw the line and pull it out again to find that a fish has bitten and thus closed its career. ”

“ At our very doors, where with the hand-line during the summer and autumn months, some ten or twelve years ago, we could almost always depend on a large basketful of the finest rock cod, gurnard, haddock, and flounder, as the result of a couple of hours fishing, more recently very few, and sometimes none at all, could be caught, with the cunningest exercise of all the patience and piscatorial skill at our command, while in winter and spring the long-line fishing of grey cod, skate, and ling, and eel has been equally disappointing. ”

“ The skil, or black cod, formerly known as the "coal-fish," is a splendid deep-water product. These cod weigh from eight to twenty pounds, and used to be caught by the Indians with hook and line. Already white men are driving the Indians out by superior methods. Trawls of 300 hooks a [279] re used, and the fish are found to be plentiful, especially off the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands. The fish is described as superior to the cod of Newfoundland in both oil and meat. ”

“ In a minute Drake hauled that up—a cod—and the fun commenced. Cod and bass, and now and then a halibut, as fast as we could bait and pull! There was soon a lively flopping in our craft, and now and then a dog-fish would take hold, much to our annoyance, for generally he broke the hook or line, or else, if we got him in, made such a furious lashing about our legs that we had to finish him with a hatchet.
We lay at anchor there until we had had fishing enough. ”

“ They are presented simply in illustration of the immense possibilities of destruction when the fisheries are carried on at the spawning season. As a matter of fact, cod are just as abundant along our coasts as they ever were, and it has not yet been demonstrated that any kind of sea fish has ever been diminished in numbers by hook and line fishing or by netting them at a distance from the shore. ”

“ The fins are enclosed in skin, and their rays are unarmed; the ventral fins are slender and terminate in a point; the median fins are large. The cod has three dorsal and two anal fins. It is a gregarious fish, and abounds in the colder waters of the seas of Europe and Newfoundland. The cod is caught by hand lines and hooks, baited with cuttle fish and shell-fish of various kinds, chiefly on the great banks of Newfoundland. ”

“ Several observant naturalists have noticed the frequency with which the species is obtained from the stomachs of the larger ground-feeding fishes,—the cod especially. Mr. Ball has taken four at a time from a single cod in Youghal shambles. This is a well-known [Pg 232] source for procuring rare specimens of the inhabitants of the deep, particularly Crustacea and the shelled Mollusca; for the fishes are expert and persevering and successful collectors of natural history, and are continually picking up objects for which the naturalist would almost give one of his eyes. ”

“ The COMMON COD (Gadus morhua, Fig. 58) is distinguished by having three fins upon its back, a small fleshy beard on the under jaw, the tail fin nearly even at the extremity, and the first ray of the anal fin spinous.
The average weight of these fish is from ten to twenty, or thirty pounds.
To the inhabitants of many countries, but more especially to those of our own, the cod fishery is a very essential source of wealth. It affords occupation to many thousand persons, and employment for several hundred sail of shipping. ”

“ There by great good luck he ran into the Doctor, who had come from St. Anthony in his little steamer the Strathcona.
"You can catch codfish with a hook and line," explained the Doctor, "but it would take too long for the fishermen who have to get their living from the sea.
"Most of the time they use a great big net, called a 'cod-trap.'
"It's like a room of network without a roof. It has a door, and the cod are steered in at the door by another net which reaches from the cod-trap to the rocks." ”

“ The fisheries of these rivers are somewhat important, the chief fish caught being the Murray cod. It grows sometimes to a vast size, to the size almost of a shark; but when the cod is so big its flesh is always rank and uneatable by Europeans. ”

“ In November of the year 1855, the writer fishing with the “long line” some little way off the North Foreland, and with a “fleet” containing only 280 hooks, caught fourteen fine cod-fish (the largest weighing thirty-four pounds and a-half) , besides skate, large whiting, conger eels, &c., using sprats for bait, whilst a “professional” cod smack-fishing, not a mile off, and whose hooks amounted to upwards of 3000, caught but three fish, and of these not one was over ten pounds in weight!—the bait used by the smack being whelks. ”

“ The Rock Cod.—Belonging to the same family134 is the rock cod, as it is usually styled by the fishermen who provide the Victoria and San Francisco markets; one of the best and daintiest table-fish caught in the seas round Vancouver Island. It often attains a considerable size, and being in tolerable abundance, constitutes an article of some commercial value. ”

“ The cod with its two to five million eggs might mourn the death of five million infants and leave its fortune to two and only two; the rest, if it is any satisfaction to it to know, have probably gone to improve the stock of other species, not excluding the cod itself; indeed, it is not at all unlikely that many cod thrive on their own offspring. ”

“ A heavy weight attached to the lower end of each line keeps it steady near the ground, where the fish principally feed. Enormous quantities of cod, haddock, whiting, and coal-fish, with pollack, hake, ling, and torsk, are taken in this way all round our coast. Of cod-fish alone four hundred to five hundred and fifty have been taken in ten hours by one man, and eight men have taken eighty score of cod in one day, fishing off the Doggerbank in five and twenty fathoms water. ”

“ Near the rock, the small red cod is often found in abundance: at some distance, as the bottom, which is covered with marine plants near the rock, alters to coral, gravel, shell sand, fine sand and mud, all of which occur in a range of depths from 4 to 23 fathoms towards the north, different kinds of fish are found ”

“ Scott secure a Murray cod, floating on the top of the water, that weighed 72lbs. This beautiful and excellent fish is figured in Mitchell's first work. It is a species of perch, and is very abundant, as well as several others of its own genus, that are richer but smaller; the general size of the cod varying from 15lbs. to 25lbs.
The manners and customs of the natives have been so well and so faithfully recorded by Mr. Eyre that I need not dwell on them here. ”

“ There is abundance of both wood and fresh water; in every part excellent fishing with the line may be had. Most of the catch will be new to English fishermen. Rock cod, blue cod, schnapper, the giant hapuka, a sort of cod, and the game kahawai, which will run like a salmon, are the best from a gastronomical and sporting point of view. Enough has been caught by a single line in a day to feed the whole crew of a man-of-war. ”

“ These ridges the fish seem to frequent rather than the valleys between, and if you will ease your sheets and, setting your boat's prow a little off the wind, drift slowly along these ridges, you will be able to cast your lines among the best of the summer society. The cod go into things only on the ground flood. ”

“ Next to the stability of this great fishery we may note the commercial value of the cod. Different from oily fishes, like the salmon and herring, its flesh is rich and gelatinous, without being fatty, and readily lends itself to a simple and efficient cure27 by salting and drying in the sun. The cured product is found to be the best of all the deep-sea fishes for use in tropical countries, and has never had a rival. ”

“ In winter the cod retire to the deeper waters, but they re-appear in March and April, when their pursuers hasten to the spot, not only from the bays and coves of Newfoundland, but from Great Britain, the United States, and France.
While fishing, each man has a space three feet and a half wide allotted to him on deck, so as not to interfere with his neighbor. The lines are from thirty to forty fathoms long—for the cod generally swims at that depth. The chief baits used are the squid, a species of cuttle-fish, and the capelin, a small salmon abounding on the North American coasts. ”

“ Most people consider cod improves by being kept for a day or two and very slightly salted.
Herrings must be absolutely fresh to be good, and when in this state their scales shine like silver. If kept over long their eyes become suffused with blood. ”