MIDDLEBORO — The fish were not running in schools, but that did not prevent a good time at the 10th-Annual Herring Run Festival at Oliver Mill Park.

“I call it the kickoff to spring,” said Middleboro Tourism Committee Chair Nathan Demers. “People are kind of coming out of hibernation and it’s a good opportunity for people to catch up and hang out.”

Saturday felt more like summer, and Demers said that because of the beautiful weather, he could envision 6,000 attendees that day alone. In years past, he said between 8,000 and 12,000 people have attended across the two weekend days.

The sun shined down on the event on Saturday, April 15, where attendees listened to live music, shopped at vendors’ tents, ate and drank, spotted herring, and learned about the local ecosystem and native tribes.

Wampanoag Native Americans from Mashpee traveled to the event in a caravan of canoes, greeted as special guests as attendees peered over the bridge on Nemasket Street to watch their arrival.

The herring were not abundant during the event, but eagle-eyed spotters caught glimpses of them jumping out of the water or swimming in sunlit patches of the river.

Middleboro-Lakeville Herring Fishery Commission volunteers periodically conduct 10-minute counts during herring run season. Volunteers take 10 minutes to count all the herring they can see, then multiply the average number of fish seen in the counts to form an estimate of the number of herring migrating in the Nemasket River.

There was a decrease in nearly half a million herring spotted from 2021 to 2022, according to the commission.

“We don’t really know why” there was such a steep drop-off, commission warden Bill Orphanos said. “It could be the warming of the oceans, overfishing, it could be many things combined. This year, it seems to be following this trend but a little bit better.”