As the name implies, Cape Cod and fishing are nearly synonymous. The Wampanoag Indians were primarily farmers, but they also dug clams, gathered oysters and scallops, caught crabs, and fished for herring and other fishes, mostly in freshwater or where it mixed with saltwater. They used bone hooks, spears, nets made of plant fibers, and wooden-staked weirs. The first European settlers on the Cape also were farmers, but they soon learned how bountiful the sea was and quickly refined and developed various kinds of fisheries. “I confess I was surprised to find that so many men spent their whole day, ay, their whole lives almost, a-fishing,” Henry David Thoreau observed in the mid-1800s. How they fished, where they fished, and what they fished for have changed greatly over the years as some species were over-fished and as technological changes were introduced. The Atlantic cod was the first fish to spark a major industry. In 1878, 63 vessels sailed out of Provincetown in search of cod and returned with more than 7.5 million pounds. Wellfleet led the Cape in fishing for mackerel; in 1879, 30 schooners followed the schools north May to November from North Carolina to Maine. The ships returned to Cape ports from long voyages with their catches salted and dried for market. After brief trips, the fish were dried on the docks in Provincetown and other ports (below left and continuing counterclockwise). Hard-shelled clams—called quahogs and pronounced as ko-hogs by Cape Codders—were and are harvested in deep water with wooden-handled rakes up to 56 feet in length. Sometimes nets were stretched between poles to form weirs; high tides would bring the fish in; and at low tide men would go out—sometimes with wagons and horses—to remove their catches. Early on fishermen used small boats or dories to fish with lines, then with nets and wooden traps, in nearby waters; trawling schooners carried dories to the fishing grounds of the banks for cod, haddock, and groundfish. At first lobsters were so plentiful they were used as bait and then as food for servants; today they are not plentiful and are among the highest-priced seafood in America. Fishermen in small boats still go out to pull up lobster traps. ############################################# Saltworks [Illustration: (Moveable covers for the salt troughs. A salt works with numerous windmills.)]