Fishing Guide: Lubec, Maine
Fishing is not a recreational amenity layered onto Lubec — it is the town's entire historical and present-day economic identity, from a sardine-canning industry that once ran 23 factories to today's working lobster, scallop, and aquaculture economy. This page covers both the historical weight of that identity, including a National Register of Historic Places smokehouse you can visit, and what is documented about fishing here today.
The Sardine-Canning Legacy, in Real Numbers
Julius Wolff established sardine canning in Lubec by 1880, and the industry then built 23 canning factories within two decades, directly driving the town's population to its all-time 1910 peak of 3,363. Before canning, an even earlier smoked-herring trade — about 45 fish weirs producing an estimated 500,000 boxes of smoked herring annually at its own peak, with 20 smokehouses already operating in Lubec by 1821 producing 50,000-60,000 boxes a year — had already made fishing Lubec's economic backbone. The industry's decline was steep: only two factories remained by 1976, and Connor Brothers, the last of Lubec's own sardine canneries, closed in September 2001 — nine years before the nationally reported "last U.S. sardine cannery" closed in a different Maine town, Prospect Harbor/Gouldsboro.
McCurdy's Smokehouse: A National Register Landmark You Can Actually Visit
McCurdy's Smokehouse, at 50 Water Street on Lubec's own waterfront, operated as a working herring smokehouse from roughly 1906 until it closed in 1991 — at the time, the last herring smokehouse still operating anywhere in the United States. The complex was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1993 and is now owned and operated as a museum by the preservation nonprofit Lubec Landmarks, part of the broader Downeast Fisheries Trail, a network of 45 fisheries-heritage sites running from Penobscot Bay to Passamaquoddy Bay that also includes Quoddy Head State Park. It is a real, physical place to see this history firsthand, not just read about it — one of Lubec's clearest direct links between its economic past and what a visitor or buyer can actually walk into today.
Today's Working Fishery
Lubec's present-day fishing economy runs on lobster, scallop, and urchin harvesting, alongside salmon aquaculture operations. Herring itself, once the town's entire economic engine, is now a comparatively minor fishery in the Cobscook Bay area, harvested from both boats and a small number of remaining shoreline weirs — a genuine, direct contrast to the roughly half-million-box annual peak documented above. This research did not find specific current lobster-landing volume or dollar-value figures for Lubec itself, and none is invented here — the University of Maine Sea Grant program maintains a dedicated "Fishing Community Vulnerability Profile" for Lubec that a build agent or researcher should pull directly for current, detailed figures before citing specific fishery statistics.
Cooke Aquaculture: A Global Company, Not a Local Startup
The company at the center of Lubec's aquaculture leases, Cooke Aquaculture, is not a small local operator — it is a large, vertically integrated salmon-farming corporation headquartered in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, Canada, which has grown from a small family farm with 5,000 fish in 1985 into one of the largest independent salmon-farming companies in the world, with operations across Atlantic Canada, the U.S. (including Maine and Washington state), Chile, Scotland, and Spain. That scale is directly relevant to understanding the stakes of Lubec's own 2025 ordinance fight below: a small Washington County town is asserting local permitting authority over leases held by a company with a genuinely international footprint, not a family fishing operation of comparable size to Lubec itself.
How Someone Actually Becomes a Lobsterman Here
Entry into Maine's lobster fishery — Lubec's largest current fishery by participation — runs through the state's own Limited Entry and Apprentice Program, administered by the Maine Department of Marine Resources rather than by the town. A new entrant typically must complete an apprenticeship logging documented sea time under a licensed captain before qualifying for their own commercial license; once licensed, a first-year license holder may purchase no more than 300 trap tags, with the allowance rising by up to 100 tags per year in subsequent seasons, capped at the trap limit set for that license's specific lobster management zone. This is a statewide Maine system, not a Lubec-specific rule, but it is the actual real-world pathway behind the "lobster harvesting" line in Lubec's own working-fishery description above, and it explains why the fishery has a genuinely limited, regulated number of participants rather than open entry.
The Live 2025 Aquaculture Regulatory Fight
A genuinely current, unresolved story: in August 2025, Lubec voters narrowly (94-81) adopted a local ordinance requiring permits for industrial-scale aquaculture over 5 acres, in direct tension with Maine's Department of Marine Resources' claimed exclusive jurisdiction — triggered by Cooke Aquaculture's pending renewal of two 32-acre leases in Lubec waters. The ordinance's legal durability is genuinely uncertain and was awaiting legal review as of this research. This is a real, live example of the tension between Lubec's traditional small-boat fishing community and larger-scale industrial aquaculture, presented neutrally here without an outcome asserted.
Recreational Fishing
This research did not confirm specific currently operating recreational or sportfishing charter operators based in Lubec, and none is invented here. Given Lubec's roughly 18.4-foot average tidal range and its working-harbor character shared with commercial fishing traffic (see this site's boating-water-access page), a visitor interested in recreational fishing here should confirm current charter availability, licensing requirements, and safety guidance directly with the Town of Lubec or the Maine Department of Marine Resources before planning a trip.
Ready to talk to a local Lubec agent?
Get a Free Agent Referral →Independent research. No ads. No sponsored listings. The sardine-canning and smoked-herring industry figures, including the 1821 smokehouse count and annual box output, are per Maine Memory Network's "Lubec History" and "Canning Sardines in Lubec" pages and the Downeast Fisheries Trail's own McCurdy's Smokehouse page. McCurdy's Smokehouse's 1906-1991 operating history, its status as the last operating U.S. herring smokehouse when it closed, its 1993 National Register of Historic Places listing, and its current museum operation under Lubec Landmarks are per Wikipedia's "McCurdy Smokehouse" entry and the Downeast Fisheries Trail's own site. The Prospect Harbor/Gouldsboro "last U.S. sardine cannery" distinction is per Bangor Daily News's "Nation's last sardine cannery closing" (April 2010). Herring's current minor role in Cobscook Bay fishing, and continued limited weir use, are per the Downeast Fisheries Trail's Cobscook Bay Resource Center page and related regional fisheries-heritage coverage. Cooke Aquaculture's Blacks Harbour, NB headquarters, its 1985 founding, and its scale and international footprint are per the company's own materials (Cooke Seafood's site) and Atlantic-Canada business-press coverage (CTV News, Canada.ca). Maine's Limited Entry and Apprentice Program and its trap-tag allowance rules (300 tags in year one, up to +100/year) are per the Maine Department of Marine Resources' own program page and Title 12 of Maine statute. The 2025 aquaculture ordinance is per The Quoddy Tides' "Lubec leaps into jurisdictional dispute over aquaculture leasing." This page did not confirm current lobster-landing figures or recreational-fishing charter operators for Lubec, and none is invented here — see the University of Maine Sea Grant's "Fishing Community Vulnerability Profile: Lubec, Maine" for current detailed data. See this site's lubec-me.md research document for full sourcing. Nothing on this page is legal or safety advice.