Two big factors contributed to our reluctance to haul today: the weather, and our lack of confidence in the bait we’d set in our traps. It turned out, though, that we’re glad we did. Our efforts were rewarded well, in the form of 6 keepers, and our first encounter with an egg-bearing female lobster.
Here, I’m taking a look at the thousands of lobster eggs clinging to the underside of her tail:
In this next clip, B v-notches the lobster’s flipper. This will indicate to other lobstermen who might catch her when she is not bearing eggs that she is a productive breeder, and that they must, by law, release her to the wild.
In addition to the v-notching fun, we decided that it’s too early to draw conclusions
about our earlier bait strategy, because this successful yield was achieved with our now week long mix of bait. So it seems that maybe it’s not the age of the bait necessarily, but rather content of oil or some other element that dictates its attractiveness to lobsters.
Also noteworthy: we’ve noticed that several of our traps are consistently more productive than others, although it’s hard to say why at this point. Each of these is at a different depth, and in areas of varying densities of other traps, with what seem to be different bottom conditions.
By the way, females lobsters are called hens, and the dudes are called cocks, like chickens.
Today’s haul of ZERO keepers was sub-par by any standard, and especially so given 
After repeated passes through our fishing grounds without spotting it, we were forced to conclude that we’d lost our first trap of the season. We’re both fairly sure that it fell victim to the prop on someone’s boat. There are typically a couple of reasons that gear goes missing: a) surly commercial lobstermen cut them when someone has invaded their territory and/or wrapped around their fishing gear, b) gear failure (e.g. knot coming untied on the pot warp), or c) gear entanglement in the motor of a passing vessel. Our gear is set well away from other lobstermen, and as each buoy is marking a single trap there is no groundline from one trap to another that might get set over someone else’s gear causing it to be entangled and cut. So it goes.
strong, like popeye forearms, and it was very frisky, climbing to the top of the bucket, apparently determined to avoid its fate…
lifeless, like a red gummi appendage, was a new little claw. No shell, no jointage, no definition, just slimy red, limp and gummi. So strange. I was troubled by this for a while.
Traps: One of the first stages in getting our game in order was to track down the needed equipment without breaking the bank. Enter craigslist.org. I was able to find 5 traps from a “retiring” non commercial lobsterman in Freeport, Maine back in the late fall. They were a little rough, but the price was right, and so I scooped them up. Earlier this spring, I was able to pick up an additional 5 traps for R, also via craigslist.org, from a commercial lobsterman out of Boothbay Harbor looking to upgrade all of his 3 foot traps to 4 footers (Sidenote: because we’re hand-hauling, we needed to buy the shorter, less productive? but lighter weight 3 foot traps). Most all of them needed a little work, and with a good amount of cursing and sweating, they were made legal over the course of two afternoons.
Saturday morning and afternoon painting my buoys. We need to do 6 each, one for each of 5 traps and a 6th to adorn the bow of the boat when hauling.
the haulress
the long hauler
