A frame for drying fish.

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1767.  Several Fish Houses, and Fish Flakes now fit for Curing Fish.—Advt., Boston-Gazette, Jan. 26.

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1792.  At their arrival, the fish [codfish] is rinsed in salt water, and spread on hurdles, composed of brush, and raised on stakes, about three or four feet from the ground; these are called flakes. Here the fish is dried in clear weather, and in foul weather it is put under cover.—Jeremy Belknap, ‘New Hampshire,’ iii. 214–5.

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1819.  [He was] attending the fish flakes at Windmill Point.—Mass. Spy, May 26.

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1844.  

        She turns the fish no more
  That dry on the flakes in the sun;
No wood she drags to the door,
  Nor water,—her labor is done.
Celia Thaxter, ‘Among the Isle of Shoals, A Woman of Star Island,’ p. 67 (1873).    

5

1844.  The white fish of the lakes are transported to the East, and sold even in sight of the flakes of our coast.—Mr. Woodbury of New Hampshire in the Senate, Feb. 8: Cong. Globe, p. 154, App.

6

1865.  The houses here were surrounded by fish-flakes, close up to the sills.—Thoreau, ‘Cape Cod,’ p. 197. (N.E.D.)

7