May 10, 2022 — The kids who hung around Perkins Cove, Maine, back in the 1960s wanted to be fishermen. By the time we were 10 or 12 years old, the ocean, boats, and fish had cast their spell on us. We knew who Mickey Mantle and Carl Yastrzemski were, but our heroes parked their pickups by the bait wharf and harpooned bluefin tuna from their boats.
We dreamed not so much of hitting home runs but of chugging into the harbor at night and unloading 600-pound giants in front of awestruck tourists peering down from the wharf.
Quite a few of us wound up fishing, at least for a while. And some of us still do.
But times have changed. And as fishing’s fortunes have declined, so, too has the number of aspiring fishermen.
“It has become painfully evident that our area is suffering from the ‘graying of the fleet,’” says Andrea Tomlinson, founder and executive director of the nascent, New Hampshire-based New England Young Fishermen’s Alliance. The Alliance’s mission is to provide aspiring fishermen with a pathway into the fleet. “This is a project I have been trying to develop for over four years.”