South Brooklyn Profiles: Red Hook Fishermen

Red Hook Fishermen
When the Gowanus divided the neighborhoods of South Brooklyn in 1941, leaving wealthy Brooklyn Heights and other prospering surrounding areas unscathed, locals coined the phrase: "The Heights got the Promenade, Red Hook got the shaft."
Yet after years of remaining empty, the Civil War-era warehouses of today's Red Hook are filled with manufacturers and entrepreneurs who are poised to gentrify the area that was once an active port. In fact, one developer is currently laying down tracks for a waterfront trolley system that he hopes to have completed within a couple of years. Meanwhile, locals head to the fairly new fishing pier at the end of Columbia Street, built next to the police department's impounding lot. The current steel pier stands in place of a wooden dock that, like the area's cobblestone streets, was a reminder of the neighborhood's charm and isolation. Officer Sean Harris remembers driving over the shaky planks. "You'd say to yourself, 'My God, I hope this pier holds up.'"
Arthur Wright, who regularly fishes off the three year-old pier, pithily assesses Red Hook's angling appeal: "Some fish for sport, others fish for support." While no one at the pier seems to be making this their living, aficionados marvel at the richness of the waters just east of Ellis Island. "There's striped bass, bluefish, flounder, and whitefish," says Joe, a 51-year-old fisherman from Sunset Park who first hit the Brooklyn waterways as a child at Prospect Park Lake and recommends the activity for children today. "It beats Nintendo and it's something to do."
Wright, along with his fishing mate Julius Yates, lives in the nearby Red Hook projects, where Yates keeps frozen a striped bass he caught the season before. "It tastes fresh as long as you don't gut it before you put it in the freezer," he explains. On a recent afternoon, the 72-year-old Yates donned a yellow shirt tucked into an oversized pair of red pants held up by suspenders before making his way to the pier. After setting up his fishing rod, he perches on a nearby bench in his slippers and socks and looked off at the Statue of Liberty. "You're not even watching your pole!" shouts Wright, who taught Yates to fish a few years ago.
Only novices like Yates bring one pole. Others have finely honed their skills, like expert fisherman Rafael Serano. Idling in his orange sedan with the front doors open, Serano keeps the radio on high and his eyes, as sensitive as a Geiger counter, peeled on the fine wire of his three fishing rods leaning against the pier's rail. Occasionally, he pulls on a rope that brings up a rusted steep trap. Once, he found a large blue crab inside.
Before the floodlights switch on and the night crowd arrives ("It's all filled from about seven to 11," says Serano), a woman and her sons laugh and dance in the parking lot to Salt 'N' Pepa's "Let's Talk about Sex." While some flock to the pier to sit in the sun or meet with friends, Yates prefers to enjoy the sport's contemplative pleasures. "Fishing gives me something to think about."

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This project is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Development Fund of BAC/Brooklyn Arts Council, Inc., which is made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.