Malcolm Hudson’s BRENDA at the dock ready to depart with a load of people hoping to catch a tuna. To the right is a DKW from World War II.
PLUM ISLAND, NEWBURYPORT, MA – Fishing for tuna has been made extremely popular by the television show “Wicked Tuna.” They use rods and reels, but before this, fishermen would handline for tuna, and this type of fishing is now portrayed as “Before Tuna was Wicked.” There were a lot of charter companies on the North Shore of Massachusetts who made their living taking people out tuna fishing, especially out of Newburyport and Plum Island. One who worked on the charter boats for some of the more notable fishermen at the time was Ron Barrett of Plum Island.
Ron was born in 1952 and spent his summers on Plum Island until the early 1970s. He said, “Well, you had to have a job. You had to have money. Nobody had money back then, didn’t even have telephones. So, I went down to the Point and got a job at like 10 or 12 years old. You would go sand eeling, put the skiffs in the water and go out on the party boats during the day. On the party boats I would set them up with fishing gear, you would chum, you would anchor the boat, unanchor the boat and drive the boat because the captain was feeling ill. In the summer, all the factories took weeks off and all the people would come down, rent a cottage, and go fishing. Then towards the end of August it slowed down, so you would get half a day, one boat or two boats.”
One of the fisherman Ron worked for was Malcolm Hudson. He added, “What we did was go sand eeling in the morning. Then we would grind up the sand eels fresh and then we chummed a lot and that brought the fish up and hopefully we’d hook them. Sometimes, he would have two or three at a time on and just hand pulling them back to the boat. I was only like 80 pounds back then. You have got the rope in your hand and you hit the back of the boat and hoping it would not take you over the side. You did not want to throw the keg over, because you wanted to stop the fish and bring it in. That is why you put the rope over the railing and let it burn off. You had your gloves on with your bucket next to you because the rope was burning. As soon as the keg went over, you had to chase it and you might have another fish on another line next to you. Everybody was trying to hold onto the fish, but as soon as that wooden keg went over and if the fish went down, all you had was splinters. They would blow it apart because they were only wooden nail kegs with wire around them. We would go fishing, most of the time, to Speckled Apron, it is called the 180 line or the rock pile in Rockport. We could catch fish because Malcolm knew how to catch fish.”
One of Malcolm’s boats that Ron remembers is the 45-foot BRENDA, which Malcolm had built in Newburyport in 1953. She was powered with a 150-hp gasoline engine. Another boat Ron remembered was BUD. The Hudsons ordered her from a builder in Ipswich, but they refused to take delivery because he had used the wrong fasteners. He also remembered the ARTIST, BARBARA K. BUELLER B. and SKIPPER. SKIPPER she was owned by George or Chris Charos, who now owns the CAPTAIN’S LADY.
When Ron started working on these tuna boats the major players were the Kezer’s and Hudson’s, “I worked for the Hudsons,” said Ron, “And I worked for the Kezer’s too. I would go when they needed somebody. We used to have fights down the Point. Kezer’s would put a desk in front of Hudson’s and then Fred Hudson, which is Malcolm’s father, would lay down on the ground if the car was headed in a different direction than coming to his ticket booth. I mean it was just a war, they hated each other. Ted Williams would come down and he would go out with the BARBARA K. because they both drank together. They would go out and get drunk and catch a fish. They say that Al Kezer was a better fisherman, but Malcolm caught more fish. We would go out and catch 16 fish, big ones, in an afternoon. The problem with the fish back then, if you put them up on the beach, they would take some steaks out of them. Then, you either sold them for dog food or you towed them back out to sea because nobody wanted them.”
“Al Kezer died in a car accident on a trip to Florida,” added Ron. “He was pulling out of a stop and they got hit. He got killed and Mary, his wife, took over. She could not handle it and her son, Albert, Jr. couldn’t run it either.”
Hudson’s purchased a piece of land in Salisbury on the river in the 1950s. They would bring the ARTIST and BRENDA there and haul them out on a ramp. Ron explained, “We use to let the boats come down on cradles and with wood rollers we would take a car and pull them up the ramp at low tide. Then we would turn them around in the parking lot with wooden rollers and park them and work on them. They had a building there that they built the skiffs in because they rented skiffs.”
Malcolm Hudson sold to Paul York, one of his captains, and he ran the new boat RANGER. Ron worked with him for a couple of years.
Another boat Ron fished on was BLUE FIN and BLUE FIN II. The owner would get high and tell the crew how to catch fish. Ron added, “One day we had two or three tuna and we were just off the beach here. We would tie them up to the bow, tail up. All of a sudden, they started slamming the hull and the boat started sinking. They had opened up the wood. I said, ‘Well can we radio?’ ‘Oh, we ain’t got a radio.’ We are like 14 years old; they are all drunk and this is the way they lived. Things stopped in the middle ‘70s as people went sport fishing. These guys didn’t because the Japanese came in and were buying the fish for ten cents a pound. So, we went out in the early ‘70s and would handline some fish and sell them to the Japanese for ten cents a pound. They would have a factory ship right on the beach. Then they changed to the 200-mile limit when the Russians came.”
“Times were changing, factories were disappearing and people were not doing this,” said Ron. “Now it has reversed back to where people want to go fishing, but they all want to rod and reel, but back then it was all keg line.”
When Ron looked back on his time, he said, “We were probably the best fishermen and then you had everybody telling everybody they were the best. Malcolm would go to the right place, the rock pile. He would know what the moon was. He knew what the tides were and when the fish were feeding. That is when we went and we would catch fish. Malcolm said the fish would come up the coast and they would swing back down this 180 line, from the Isle of Shoals to the rock pile in Rockport, and then they hit these spots where the fish are and they love to eat. And he says it is the same every year.”
At about this time Ron left the fishing business and purchased a gas station and a building company. The building company not only built houses, but also boats, offshore powerboat racers. Ron really got into the offshore racing scene doing it seriously from the late ‘70s to the early ‘90s. Most of the boats that he built were V-bottomed and about 32 feet in length powered with 300-hp outboards. He still does some racing up on Lake Winnipesaukee and Sebago Lake, but mostly for fun. Ron even ran a race out of Newburyport for eight years. Unfortunately, there was an accident where one of the racers went through the side of his boat at about 100 mph. Fortunately, he recovered after about a year of rehabilitation. That was not the reason Ron called it quits, it was the amount of money you had to spend to stay competitive and the beating your body takes.
What came next? He began coming to the lobster boat races here in Maine. Ron said, “Somebody told me about it and I said I have to see how fast these boats are. I met a guy at my gas station that lived in Boothbay, Mark Curtis. He was working as a carpenter on my friend’s house I told him I want to see how fast they go. I will bring the radar with the big screen. He said, ‘That will be great, there was an old boat sitting in the middle.’ We threw it on the bow of the schooner so everybody could see the speed. At the time they were not announcing the speed because they did not have a radar gun.”
That was in the mid-1990s and has yet to miss a race in Boothbay Harbor. After meeting Ron on the committee boat, I convinced him to do several other races. He now does the radar gun, not only at Boothbay, but also at Rockland, Friendship, Harpswell, Long Island and Portland.
Ron also has a place in Brownfield and is currently assisting in redoing Burnt Meadow ski resort there. He said, “We got a ski mountain given to us and we are cutting trails and fixing the lodge. This place closed in ’81 so you have got trees, a lot of birch, say 6-inches at the most. People can stop there either on snowmobiles or skis, go sledding we don’t care. People can go online and see it. Right now, we need money to build a wood deck.
“Brownfield burned down in ’47,” said Ron. “The farms all burnt, the cows burnt, the buildings burnt, there was nothing left. Even the wooden water pipes through town, the fire got into them and burnt them up. It was bad. Three hotels gone. The water for the train. I didn’t realize they were still using trains that needed water back in ’47.
