Herring Festival

Easter 1982

JAMESVILLE, NC -- Several of North Carolina’s northeastern rivers and tributaries are the breeding fields of the herring. The fish furnished food, industry, and recreation for ages. The spring herring run was a time of great activity, celebrations, and gatherings focused on the work at hand. Whole industries sprang up along the Chowan and Roanoke Rivers.

Herring make their way from the Atlantic Ocean through the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds into the depressions and holes in the bottomlands of the swamps along the rivers and creeks here. There, they spawn in the protected shallows of the swamps created by spring flooding.

Jamesville, a Martin County town of 500, was long the home of a herring fishery. The fish industry is now gone. Even the herring have become scarce because of overfishing and environmental degradation. In 1982, fishing was still popular. Men took vacation during the spring to spend their time drift-netting along the treacherous currents of the Roanoke River. The town gathered on Easter weekend to celebrate the fish.

Today, residents still remember the fish that added so much to life there. But, no longer may they fish for them due to restrictions aimed at recovering the population. They still celebrate, but the herring they eat come form South Carolina where restrictions are milder. They gather together to remember, but no longer gather the fish.