Giller is a 19th-century term for a person who fishes using a gillnet, as used in the Chesapeake Bay region from the early 19th to the mid-20th centuries.[1] Gillers worked individually or in groups of two or three men using a small boat from which they set and gathered a gillnet. Gillnets first appeared on the Potomac River in 1838 to fish for American shad, and rapidly became the most popular type of fishing gear in the bay region[2] because they allowed the independent fisherman to work with limited resources, following the fish with his boat and net as they moved from place to place in search of food or to spawn.[3] Gillnet fishing in Chesapeake Bay shadfisheries frequently led to conflict among states bordering the bay, with Pennsylvania seiners blaming Maryland gillers for over-harvesting and blocking shad passage upstream into the Susquehanna River, and Maryland gillers blaming Virginia pound-netters for intercepting fish on their northward migration up the bay.[4] Conflicts sometimes erupted into violent confrontations, called "Gillers Wars," during one of which in 1876, a giller in Charles County, Maryland was indicted by the county court for assault with intent to kill the captains of a steamer and a tug.[5] Upon trial he was found not guilty, but his case evidences the extent of the trouble between gillnetters and other bay users that led to involvement by state authorities in regulating fishing and settling disputes involving gillers.[6]
^Richard Gerstell: American Shad in the Susquehanna River Basin: A Three-hundred-year History, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pa., 1998, pp. 73, 116.
^L. S. Chowning: Harvesting the Chesapeake: Tools and Traditions, Tidewater Publishers, Centreville, Md., pp. 30-37.
^Hunter Davidson, Commander, Fishery Force of Maryland: Report on the Oyster Fisheries: Potomac River Shad and Herring Fisheries, and the Water-Fowl of Maryland to His Excellency the Governor and Other Commissioners of the State O.P. Force, January, 1872, pp. 35-41.
^R. A. St. Pierre: History of American shad fisheries of Chesapeake Bay, 134th Annual Conference, American Fisheries Society, Aug. 18-22, 2002, Baltimore, MD.
^Roberta J. Wearmouth: Abstracts from The Port Tobacco Times and Charles County Advertiser, Volume Four: 1876-1884, Heritage Books, Inc., Westminster, Md., 1999, p. 9.
^Hunter Davidson, Commander, Fishery Force of Maryland: Report on the Oyster Fisheries: Potomac River Shad and Herring Fisheries, and the Water-Fowl of Maryland to His Excellency the Governor and Other Commissioners of the State O.P. Force, January, 1872, pp. 35-41.
