Fred Leavitt: Lobsters & Crabs

Friday, October 26, 2023

Ben and Justin flew in late Monday evening and to make matters worse, their flight was delayed. Alex and I picked them up at 1:00am. Tuesday I worked while the boys played but I did go with them for lunch at a place called “The Great Maple”. It was delicious.

After lunch I went back to work until it was time to head out to sea. Our boat was called “Alicia”.

Once aboard the Alicia, we stowed our fishing gear and headed out into the bay. There were ten people fishing aboard the boat and we all picked a number from 1 to 10. I was number 8. We had ten lobster nets (or traps) so the first thing we did was drop the nets in ten different likely spots. We then waited for an hour.

While we waited we would head off to what was supposed to be a likely fishing spot and cast out our lines. It is a good thing the view was stunning, because the fishing was lousy. There were ten of us fishing but not a single person had so much as a nibble.

At one point Ben thought he had something but when he pulled his line in, he had a little fish called a lizard fish hanging on to his piece of squid he was using for bait. The guy refused to let go but finally did and dropped back into the water. I ended up bringing a couple of lizard fish into the boat.

Even though Ben is acting like he is reeling in a monster fish, the biggest thing he got was that lizard fish.

The fishing may have been bad but the company was great and we still had a great time visiting with each other. We even played a few games of hearts while our bait was sitting on the bottom of the bay.

The main purpose of the trip was to catch lobster and the fishing was just to kill time between pulling in the lobster so after an hour it was time to pull in the nets.

Ben was the first one of the four of us to pull so we were all optomistic when he hauled in two lobsters. One was too small and had to be tossed back but the other guy looked like he would be plenty big enough for a meal.

Justin pulled next and I was excited to see that his net was filled with crabs. They were crawling all over his net. Even after throwing half of them back he still had eight that he could keep. Alex and I got nothing on that first pull. It was a bit disheartening.

On the second pull Ben got two more lobsters and was able to keep one, Justin got a bunch of more crabs and was able to keep five, Alex got nothing and I got two lobsters. My two lobsters were huge and the two biggest that were caught that day. One was estimated at five pounds and the other at four pounds.

On our third and final pull Ben caught and kept one more lobster, Justin got nothing, Alex got nothing and I got nothing. It was really disheartening for Alex to get skunked and he was quite dejected. Alex did actually catch a sting ray but that didn’t count for anything.