No herring means costly lobster bait for fishermen

Fishermen trying to bait lobster in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and eastern Northumberland Strait this week will be using expensive, imported herring.

Even before the first lobster season of the year begins for fishermen in P.E.I. and northwest Nova Scotia, they are falling behind because they haven't been able to catch their own herring.

"In the '60s and '70s, I'd chuck out a couple of old nets and haul in three, four, five hundred pounds," Norm Peters, who fishes out of North Rustico, P.E.I., told CBC News on Tuesday.

"You put out 10 nets now, and one fellow put out 10 nets and I don't know if he had two herring."

To draw lobster into the traps, fishermen will have to pay for frozen boxes of bait from off the Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia or Newfoundland. Some fishermen will pay about $200 a day to bait all their traps.

Pam Doucette, who also fishes out of North Rustico, said it is an added expense they can't afford to shoulder.

"You're not making nothing.  All your fuel, all your bait, all your stuff you bought all winter to build your traps, all your nets to go catch the herring, and there were none," said Doucette.

Fishermen can only hope for a good catch and higher prices than they've seen in recent years.

The answer to how that will go was delayed a day due to high winds, but the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has confirmed fishermen will be allowed to set traps Thursday.