STAN ENNIS:

Stan was born in Merasheen on December 2, 1906 and at the age of just 7 years started fishing with his father. He married Les Pomroy and raised a fine family of twelve. This is certainly a credit to any man, but in particular Stan, as Les passed away when most of the crowd were still young, and Stan had the difficult task of raising the family alone. He obviously did an exceptionally good rob, because there was no more popular or better liked family in the harbour and often on a Sunday afternoon there was standing room only at Stan's place, as friends of his crowd from Sheila's generation down, gathered there to wait for one of the family, and Stan would usually entertain the crowd with a yarn or two Like most of the older fishermen.

Stan has seen the transition from dories and sailing punts to the present modern day long liner. In the early sixties, Stan had one of the first long liners in Merasheen and he along with Andy and Phil fished in her until this year, when they had a new boat built in Trinity Bay.

Stan has numerous stories of his hard working days and he tells of the time when he and his brother, Ab, along with other fishermen were in Scrape Cove one evening with the caplin seine. However, it was one of those nights when caplin were scarce, and after several hours of searching unsuccessfully, they decided to go home, getting back to the harbour at 2 am. Stan knew it was only a matter of hours and he would be back at it again, so he did not even bother to take off his oil clothes, but rather, went up to the house, and lay under the kitchen table for an hour's sleep.

There were humorous incidents as well of course. Like the morning Stan was going down around the head looking for bait with a lantern strapped to the bow. He felt something stick into his side, but it wasn’t too serious, so he waited until daylight to check it out when he discovered that a bill fish had jumped over the side of the punt and right down into his oil pants.

Stan and his family were one of the last families to leave Merasheen in the fall of '68. He, along with Andy and Phil, return to Merasheen each summer and obviously have no intention of giving it up for some time to come because as mentioned above, they had a new modern long liner built for this year’s fishery.