I remember the Merrimack when it was just a creek,” Daniel “Buzzer” Connors jokes. The Newburyport native has been fishing the sea for more than 35 years. “Newburyport had dirt roads then.”
Buzzer remembers the good old days, when his family would drive “out back,” which is what people called the area around the Artichoke Reservoir. There was no controversial dump on Crow’s Lane then and no I-95. He tells tales of Newburyport of old, of his fishing boat being hit by a rogue wave one January (“I’ll never forget that day.”) and the Mastodon tooth he pulled up in his net while dragging for ground fish. He has caught thousands of pounds of fish from his (now his son’s) boat, the Early Times II.
A foundry worker for years after graduating from high school, Buzzer bought a small boat with a friend in the late 1960s. They ran private charters until his friend moved to Florida around 1970. It was on to tuna fishing on the Early Times. He spent the winters working construction or tub trawling (also called long lining). In the early 1970s, a friend suggested that he try drag fishing – and took him out for a demonstration. “I never saw so many different kinds of fish in my life. I said ‘Wow, I’ve got to do this!’” (He has not fished for tuna for a number of years because he does not think that it’s worth it anymore.)
“You’ve got to work with your environment.”
Buzzer remembers when codfish would come into the mouth of the Merrimack in September, and the river would be just loaded with them. Fisherman could catch huge codfish on the “cushion,” a ledge off Salisbury Beach (“right off the roller coaster”). “There were so many fish, we would go down to the island at dawn; the beach would be littered with silver hake, Pollock, mackerel – everything – if there was any wave action.”
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Townie Tuesday is contributed to weekly by Gillian Swart of Newburyportbiz.com. She can be reached for comment at gillianswart@gmail.com
