|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Fishing runs through Harpswell like the rise and fall of the tides. For Josh and Emily Morse, it’s more than a livelihood — it’s part of who they are, woven through generations of family tradition.
Both fourth-generation fishermen, Josh and Emily each hold a 100-ton captain’s license. Emily, the daughter of Jennifer and Mark Bichrest, grew up in Cundy’s Harbor. Josh, the son of Kathy and Sheldon Morse, was raised on Harpswell Neck.
Born into local fishing families with long histories on the water, they fell in love as high school sweethearts and today work side by side as husband and wife, following the fisheries from Maine to Rhode Island in pursuit of pogies, scallops, herring and lobster.
Just after 5 a.m. on July 15, the air hangs heavy with haze from the Canadian wildfires. Josh and Emily, with their 12-year-old son, Henry, and crew members Alan Auclair, Mark Cota, Isaac Gates, and Carter Violette, leave their wharf on Merriman Cove and board the Red Jacket for a day of pogy fishing.
Over the last decade, as Maine’s herring fishery has declined, pogies have largely taken its place. More officially known as Atlantic menhaden, the pogy has become the lobster industry’s primary baitfish.
Teamwork, and a messy success
There’s a bit of small talk, but conversation is light. Henry climbs the ladder to the lookout tower. The crew pulls on foul-weather gear and settles into familiar routines. Emily boards a skiff while Josh launches a drone before the Red Jacket leaves its mooring.
On this morning, we’re not going far. Flying about 1,000 feet above the water, it doesn’t take long for Josh to spot a school of pogies on the drone’s video feed. It’s just south of Clark Cove, practically in his backyard.
“Usually, we’ll get two to three weeks and the pogies will come in here pretty good. Sometimes they’ll come in and stay. Five or eight years ago, they came in the bay here and settled in,” Josh says.
The fish can be so plentiful that the coast occasionally sees a pogy “die-off.” Predators such as bluefish drive a school into a cove, where the fish deplete the oxygen in the water and suffocate. The dead fish — millions, in a newspaper account of a 1988 die-off in Harpswell — wash up on shore, where the stench and mess can become a serious nuisance.
The crew fishes with a net known as a purse seine. On the surface, purse seining seems simple enough: Set the net, encircle the school, then winch in the purse line to close the bottom of the net. In practice, it’s anything but simple. Success depends on experience, timing and teamwork.
Talking about the nets and rigging, Josh says, “My father-in-law has been so helpful. You can get in a mess so fast.”
With the morning still calm and the haze thick, Josh pilots the Red Jacket toward the school, keeping one eye on the drone’s video feed. “You can see the change in color of the water right there,” he says, gesturing to a silvery blob on the screen that denotes the school. The crew readies the net, and as they near the fish, Isaac prepares to set it by throwing a basket from the stern that helps pull the net into the water.
They are using a relatively small purse seine today. Even so, it’s two football fields long and nearly one deep. One hundred fathoms of net spool off the stern as Josh steers the boat in a wide circle around the school. Once the fish are surrounded, the crew winches in the purse line, closing the bottom of the net before beginning the long process of stacking it back aboard and hauling in the catch.
Meanwhile, Emily, piloting the skiff, picks up a tow line attached amidships on the Red Jacket and secures it to the skiff. Acting as a tug of sorts, the skiff keeps the Red Jacket from drifting over the net and fouling it in the boat’s running gear.
With the net stacked tight alongside the Red Jacket and the catch corralled in a pocket against the boat, the crew prepares to “brail” the fish, or hoist them with a dip net, and to barrel the catch.
Emily operates the hoist while Josh guides the brail net, dipping into the pocket of fish alongside the boat and maneuvering the net to the bin for barreling.
The air is filled with spray from thrashing fish and salt as the fish are funneled into barrels. It’s messy work. Dodging flying pogies and salt spray, Alan and Isaac work the barrels in the hold while Henry and Carter man the chute and mix in bait salt. Each barrel receives a bag or so of salt to help preserve the catch.
Fish that miss the barrel carpet the floor of the hold, creating a slick surface. Hoods are cinched tight, and some of the crew wear goggles or sunglasses to shield their eyes from the spray. As each barrel is filled, it’s rolled aside and replaced with an empty one. The process repeats until the net is emptied and the crew prepares to set it again.
Unfortunately, on the next set, the net snags bottom debris, ripping a roughly 100-foot tear that allows the school to escape and ends fishing for the day.
With the damaged net hauled aboard and nearly 30 barrels of pogies in the hold, the Red Jacket heads to Interstate Lobster on Ash Point to land its catch. Once unloaded, the bait barrels are put in a dockside freezer, waiting to be pulled out for use as lobster bait.
The division of responsibilities doesn’t end at the dock. Emily brokers the catch and files the required landing reports, keeping up with ever-changing fishing regulations. Josh and his crew maintain the boat and gear, ensuring they’re ready when it’s time to head back out on the water. And from time to time, the whole family pitches in.
The hidden ingredient
Pogies aren’t glamorous. In fact, they are just the opposite. The pogy is an oily, silvery fish. It isn’t on the menu at any local restaurant. But the next time you sit down to a lobster feast, there’s a good chance it was caught using locally fished pogies.
Maine’s 2026 pogy season began in early June, although Emily and Josh began their season in southern New England in May, fishing in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
While pogy fishing is a sideline for some lobstermen in Maine, for the Morses, it’s their focus and their living. “We kind of got into it because my father was doing it, and now it’s what we do,” Emily said.
2025 was a pretty big year for pogies in Harpswell and Maine overall, with a statewide base quota of 24 million pounds. This year the quota was reduced to 19.5 million pounds, or 17,850 pounds per week, per boat, with fishing permitted on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, which sets the quota, indicated the reduction was not because of overfishing, but to protect species that depend on pogies as a food source.
In early August, harvesters reached the state quota, but the commission initiated a second round of fishing, reducing the weekly cap per boat to 14,000 pounds.
Despite their abundance in Harpswell waters, the season length and harvest quotas aren’t sufficient to supply local lobstermen with enough pogies to meet their annual bait needs.
How many tons have the Morses landed through the years? Josh didn’t share a number. But: “I’d say we’ve caught our fair share.”
