Interview: Corey Wheeler Forrest

Corey Wheeler Forrest comes from a family with deep roots in the Rhode Island trap fishing industry. One summer day, Corey jumped on her dad’s boat to help the shorthanded crew. Twenty years later, the English Literature graduate of St. Michaels College has not looked back. This season, Corey took on the additional role of fish dealer for the family’s two businesses, Point Trap Fishing Co. and Tallman & Mack out of Sakonnet Point. Thanks to an Instagram message from a fish broker out of Boston, the family’s bonita and striped bass are being featured on the menu at the world renowned The French Laundry in California. Corey and her husband, Rob Forrest, and their young children Finn and Isley live in Portsmouth.

 

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My grandfather bought point Trap back around the late ‘40s, early ‘50s. In 1997 my dad bought Tallman & Mack from George Mendonsa, the famous kissing sailor in the Times Square photo. George was in his 70s then and was only going to work a short time with the company but ended up working with us for ten years. George may be the best of the best as far as trap fishing goes. Trap fishing has been around for hundreds of years. Now it’s just our two companies and two other small trap fishing operations in Rhode Island. It is labor intensive. It takes a month for us to set the gear, which we do in April with a lot of guys placing twenty-six 900-pound anchors to hold the giant floating traps in place. We have one fishing boat, which had been George’s, the Maria Mendonsa named after his mother, and three 30-foot aluminum boats. Our season runs May 1 through October depending on the fish. We fish scup, fluke and sea bass among others. 

Two weeks before this season I had to become our fish dealer. We had boatloads of scup at the height of the season and I had to move it. My brother Luke and I drove to Fulton Fish Market in the Bronx, hub of the East Coast fish business to meet buyers. Trap fishing is environmentally friendly. Everything caught is alive so if there is a regulation and we have caught too much of one species we literally throw them overboard and they swim away. We don’t use a lot of fuel because our traps are set in the same spot. We are not looking around for fish. When we offload we immediately ship. I’m up at 3:30am, down at the dock early before we head out at six. Fulton gets our fish delivery around midnight the same day we ship and immediately starts selling. I check text messages from the fish brokers so I know how much was sold and how much we need to fish and ship that day. We also ship to Canada, up and down the East Coast and to the Carolinas. I’ve heard stories from buyers that when they open the box the fish are still alive on the ice. 

It is a team effort to make the operation work. I love working with my dad and my brother every day. Part of what makes the job so fun and interesting is the diverse group of guys I have worked with over 20 years; teenagers to men in their 80s, felons, plumbers, artists, teachers, lawyers and veterans. 

Being a woman it can feel like a circus show sometimes. I’ll be unloading on the dock and people will be pointing at me and taking pictures, like “isn’t that cute.” I don’t know if I would have wanted to be a fisherman if it wasn’t for my family’s business. It will always be part of me.