DISCOVER THE SECRET PATH TO A PIONEER PAST:
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Many memories cling to historic fish house
By LINDA WALTON
NEWS-JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW SMYRNA BEACH — Once upon a time, a vast commercial fishing fleet would leave the docks in New Smyrna Beach, streaming out into the ocean through the treacherous waters of Ponce de Leon Inlet.
The drawspan of the old wooden North Bridge at the end of a narrow North Causeway, flanked with Australian pines, would swing outward to let them pass.
Motorists or pedestrians, sometimes stuck waiting for dozens of boats to slide through the opening, would try to estimate when the boats would return and plan trips to and from the mainland accordingly.
When the commercial boats did come back, they usually were weighted down with bounty from the sea.
“At one time, in the mid-1930s, there were as many as 200 boats working out of New Smyrna Beach,” said Larry Sweett, a local historian and New Smyrna Beach city commissioner. “They would come in with a full load of about 100 boxes on board, packed with shrimp or fish.”
But those days have long since washed away with the tide.
“We have no commercial fishing now,” Sweett said, “except for a few boats that dock at Sea Harvest.”
The last remaining fish house in the area — once one of seven on the riverfront off the North Causeway — now sits empty.
Although the sign outside still says “Deep Water Seafood,” the fish house part of the business failed to succeed after its owners, Frank and Luz Schaaf, bought it for $1.2 million from Bill Feger.
The current owners have different ideas for the historic fish house and its surrounding property, long under lease from the city by the Fegers and which the Schaafs have purchased for $750,000.
Bill Feger retired in 2000 after a lifetime centered on what had become the longest continually operated business in New Smyrna Beach — Feger Seafood.
His father, William Feger Sr., started in the seafood business in the 1930s, when fish house docks were prolific and profitable in Southeast Volusia County and commercial boats came from all over to reap the rewards.
The elder Feger originally went into business with a partner at another fish house dock but later, left to start his own.
“I was about 4 at the time and can remember being on the dock at my father’s business all of the time,” his son recalled. “The fishermen who docked their boats there would look out for me.”
The 1930s, ’40s and ’50s were prosperous but difficult times for commercial fishermen taking the large, wooden net boom boats through the difficult inlet passage.
With scant weather predictions available, many boats — and their crews — were lost when unexpected storms swept through.
One such fisherman remembers the trials well.
Randolph Hardy, now in his late 80s, was one of a large contingent of shrimp boat captains who plied the waters of the Atlantic Ocean for their livelihoods. And he remembers seeing a good friend’s shrimp boat overcome by an inlet swell and sink.
“There wasn’t a storm or anything,” Hardy said in an interview with The News-Journal in 2001. “This swell just came up and his boat went under.”
Nevertheless, captains of commercial boats kept heading for New Smyrna Beach, bringing in tons of shrimp and fish. At that time, the McDonnell family had a commercial boat repair business that lasted up to the early 1950s. It was next door to Feger’s Seafood, where the Boat and Ski Club is today.
As the decade drew to a close, however, nearly all of the fish houses were abandoned and eventually torn down. Only Feger’s survived and thrived, thanks partly to an influx of North Carolina shrimpers to the area, several of whom stayed and bought homes.
Shrimp was so plentiful then that folks who are in their 60s and beyond can recall helping “head shrimp” (pinching off the heads) at the docks after the boats unloaded.
“You either got 5 cents for heading a whole lot of shrimp or could take shrimp home,” Sweett said.
Some area youngsters placed nail kegs in a wagon and, after heading shrimp on the dock all day, they were allowed to fill them with shrimp of their own. Then they pulled the wagon home.
Bill Feger eventually took over the family business and, with his wife, known throughout the community as Miss Emma, continued to accommodate boats waiting at the docks to unload.
“During the season, they would be stacked four and five deep,” Feger said.
By then, the river channel had been dug and the scenery again had changed somewhat, with spoil islands resulting from the placement of the dredged material.
One was Chicken Island, right across the river from Feger’s. And Bouchelle Island, now filled with homes, was created in the same manner — with dredged fill from the river.
The old wooden North Bridge also had been deemed unsafe and closed but with its draw span left open so commercial boats still could reach the sea.
For a while, motor traffic had only the South Causeway Bridge to get back and forth from the beachside to the mainland. That bridge also had a draw that moved outward until it was replaced with a more modern bridge.
The Fegers continued running their business — buying fish and shrimp from the boats that docked there and also operating a counter where residents could shop for straight-from-ocean-fresh seafood.
In the years to come, they became politically active with the Ponce de Leon Port Authority and several regulatory agencies.
For the Port Authority, Bill Feger had one constant question, based on port district taxes his father had started paying back in the 1940s and the same port authority taxing district funds still being collected.
“Where’s the port?” he would ask repeatedly at Volusia County Inlet and Port District board meetings through the years.
As local commercial fishing began tapering off, Feger believed it would grow again if a deep water port was developed, contending he could accommodate only so many boats at his dock and others had nowhere to go.
He also represented commercial fishermen when one boat reported its nets torn because of catches made on an improperly marked artificial reef — one of dozens built offshore under the auspices of the port authority.
His complaint resulted in closer scrutiny of reef deployment contractors to be certain they were placing the materials exactly in the right areas.
And in 1999, Feger convinced the U.S. Coast Guard to mark a location in the inlet where commercial boats were hitting ground when trying to get through.
“If a boat gets damaged by scraping bottom, it’s out of work,” Feger said.
But the fishing industry had dwindled even before then.
“A lot of the boats had been going off the coast of Mexico and around the New Orleans area,” Sweett said.
And some commercial fishermen probably gave up, according to Feger, because of the many new regulations that affected fishing, including provisions for turtle release traps in the nets and other restrictions.
Fishermen also became aware of an increasing number of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), reportedly established to protect dwindling fish species.
The MPAs are zones where no fishing of any kind is allowed and include two areas off Fort Pierce, plus numerous locations in the Florida Keys, the Dry Tortugas and on the West Coast.
Some scientists and environmentalists have argued that half of the world’s marine waters, including up to 30 percent in the United States, need to be protected from any type of fishing, according to a recent issue of Research in Review, a Florida State University publication.
When Feger retired and sold his business, the new owners indicated they hoped to continue as it had been operated.
However, the commercial fishing boats that had still docked at Feger’s moved on and were replaced at a newer dock system by sport fishing boats. The Schaafs also leased out the fish market part of the business, which also has closed.
As owners of the complex — which includes the Fishin’ Store, along with Jay Wilson and Schaaf’s sister, Sue Larson, who own smaller shares — they have settled a deal with the City of New Smyrna Beach to buy the surrounding open land that was initially leased by them.
There has been talk of the possibility of opening a restaurant, along with a full marina but, according to Wilson, no hard and fast decisions have been made.
“We are waiting to see what the overall plan for the (North) Causeway is going to be,” he said of development plans presented to the city for the former Food Lion shopping center and adjoining Elks Club tract.
After Feger sold the family business to the Schaafs, both he and his wife were the honorees at the first New Smyrna Beach Seafood Festival staged by Deep Water Seafood in 2001.
A second event took place the next year but it was put on hold in 2003.
The Seafood Festival is back this year and is being sponsored and coordinated by The Daytona Beach News-Journal.
“It was just too much for us to handle,” said Jay Wilson, who cooked almost 1,000 pounds of fish for the 2002 gathering, which drew upwards of 8,000 people during the last day-long event on the grounds of the old and now abandoned “Feger fish house.”
