Down to $15.59/Lobster

I updated the Balance Sheet finally.  It’d been a while, I know…

Frankly, we’re doing significantly better than I ever would have expected. We’re actually at the $15 per lobster threshold. You see plenty of menus offering lobster dinners for anywhere between $15 and $25.  So 15 bucks invested in gear, gas* and incidentals for each lobster we’ve hauled doesn’t sound THAT bad by comparison.

But take into account current market prices, on the other hand, and our record isn’t all that great either!

Commercially, lobster is selling for around $6.99-7.99 per pound; wholesale it’s selling at a near record, industry-crippling low of $2.25 per pound – that’s “less expensive than hot dogs,” says one lobster boat captain. Assuming that a lobster with the minimum legal carapace length weighs no less than one pound, I would guess that the average weight of our haul has been around 1.125-1.25 pounds per lobster.

By those numbers, I think we still need to get in the ballpark of $8 per lobster for this to have made ANY economic sense.  But of course this doesn’t make any sense, because I haven’t included opportunity costs (I could have spent my time becoming a mistress of fly fishing? or we could have vacationed in Mexico??)  or the fact that we NEVER would have wanted to eat this much lobster to begin with:)

*Note: our itemized expenses and total costs now include gas, which we had previously overlooked. Though it’s a minor expense given that the motor (which hopefully will be back up and running soon, poor guy!) is only 20 horse power and gets good fuel efficiency, it does begin to add up.

See our updated itemized expenses on the Balance Sheet.

See our cost per lobster chart from July 5, 2009.

!Motor Trouble!

Plenty of things went wrong today. The motor died while it was idling while I tended the first trap, and try as we might, we couldn’t get it started again. We were forced to tend the remaining traps under the power of my electric trolling motor.

Guest lobsterman Greg (B still away) had some bad luck with my mackerel  rod when he went to cast and the entire top end of the rod popped loose and flew into the ocean, never to be seen again. And finally, a lot of shorts, but no keepers.

New bait used today — menhaden, or as they’re locally known, pogies. They’re bigger and rounder than herring, and I strung them directly through the eye without using a bait bag. Most lobstermen have what’s called a “bait iron” for this task. It’s basically a long needle that’s used to thread the line through the bait in order to secure it within the trap. Not having a bait iron, I was forced to rely on brute force and my trusty Swiss Army Knife.

I’ve heard from some local lobstermen that they don’t like using the pogies because they’re more bony and have less flesh than herring. We’ll see what happens.  Here’s the view as I was towed home (Thanks again, Nate).

Substitute Lobsterman

With B off to the Mid-West for a long weekend, we had a guest lobsterman aboard. My dad had plenty of ideas as to where he thought the lobsters might be……..  But only the next haul will tell if my slight readjustment of trap placement will pay dividends.   I was able to finally set my 5th trap, after tracking down our friendly local Officer at the Department of Marine Resources in order for him to issue me a replacement tag for the trap that I lost on 7/10.  Two keepers today: one decent one, one just over the minimum 3 1/4 inch carapace length. I heard they might be turned into lobster rolls by the time this goes to print…..

A Decent, if Unremarkable Haul

7 keepers tonight, which is a pretty strong performance.

BUT things seem to be tapering off a bit, and we’ve noticed that much of the lobstering gear has moved out of the area…

Maybe the majority of the lobsters have wandered out a little bit deeper in preparation for the summer molt? Or maybe the departure of our competition has countered the effect of there being fewer lobsters anyway?? Are we just scooping up the stragglers?? OR… Do we continue to over-think this?

Anyhow, one of the ones that we kept was a BRUTE. Take a look at those claws.

We did have a nice picnic out on the water — do most commercial lobstermen snack like this after a haul?

The Big and the Small

Tonight produced both the BIGGEST crab we’ve seen — dwarfing the earlier biggest caught on June 21 — and the TINIEST   lobster to date, which literally fit in the palm of my hand.

We were surprised the little one didn’t escape through the vents in the trap designed to let the small ones out. I guess we hauled it before it had a chance to scoot away.

Here the two critters are posed next to one another for comparison.

The haul was semi-ok, with ultimately only one keeper. We had another that was quite close to the legal size, but ultimately proved just a hair too short.  We let it go, but not before it managed to give B. a serious chomp on her hand with its serrated pincher claw.

This may or may not have been my fault…

Just as dangerous as the wily short that nipped B. was a surly group of yahoos that we encountered out in our usual fishing grounds, laughing and carrying on as if they owned the place.  

More Debate, Fewer Conclusions

Of note today were two things: a lobster with the earliest signs of a regenerated limb, and the conclusion that we have been trying to draw conclusions too quickly with regard to bait.

With fresh herring in the traps, and a two-night soak, our traps produced 3 keepers and a lot of crabs — 16 in one trap, in fact. This is not remarkably better or worse than we’ve done in the past by simply “topping off” with a few fresh fish in a bait bag that hasn’t been decimated by lobsters and crabs.

So I think we’re done, for the moment, with believing there’s some specific bait recipe that produces more than another…

We did move some gear around a little, into shallower water (about 12 feet, in both cases), if nothing more than for a change of scenery while we’re hauling.

We also heard from a friend recently that in addition to looking at the swimmerettes of the lobster to determine its sex, you can also observe a difference in the curvature of the tail. A flatter tail or wider curvature indicates a female; this adaptation exists allegedly to create a more protected area under the tail where the female will carry her berries.

Can you spot this subtle difference in the photo of the two lobsters here?

!!Lost Gear… AGAIN

We forgot to charge the camera batteries yesterday.  I especially would have  liked to share a picture of a tiny claw on a large crab.

A. lost a trap last night – serious bummer.  Just when we thought we were back at full capacity. It was one of his favorites too, out by the red can off the northwestern tip of Great Diamond.

We did have 5 keepers though, not a bad haul.  Cost per lobster is coming down even as we continue to lose gear, we’re somewhere around $26 a lobster now.

An Unexpected Haul

Well, well well… last night threw every theory we ever had OUT THE WINDOW…

We went out with a bucket of fresh salted herring to bait the traps. It’d been 12 DAYS since we’d last rebaited.  That’s the longest we’ve gone without rebaiting. With the July 4th holiday, following by out-of-town meetings for work, we just hadn’t had time to tend the traps,  so we’d had to leave them out there dormant for a few days.

Needless to say, we did not expect to find anything in the traps last night.

BUT WE DID.  We got 5 good sized keepers last night!

Not bad not bad not bad at all.  Especially considering that the bait bags had been picked CLEAN, literally they were empty but for a few scales here and there. We found all the keepers in the parlor, so they must have been a sampling of some of the stupider of the species (see the NPR story on that here).

We got a couple really good-sized ones, most of them very hard shell, with dark speckles.

You may remember that I had lost a trap a while ago.  Well, for $15 each we bought two used traps from a retiring lobsterman of 50 years in South Portland and I got my replacement tag from the Department of Marine Resources for $0.40 last week.  So last night we finally put in my fifth trap.  I’m happy to announce that we’re back at full capacity.

By the time we got back up to the house, cleaned the boat and scrubbed the stench of bait off ourselves, it was too late for dinner.  The lobsters went to friend this morning.

Cost per Lobster @ $33

We’ve been hauling for just about three weeks now.  We’ve invested $554 so far.  And we’ve hauled 17 keepers.  Our expenses are still rising but cost per lobster is coming down, if gradually.  We’re at $32.57 per lobster.

See our running list of expenses at the Balance Sheet.

More Musings on Bait

One more thing on bait.

On July 29, we did ok: on 9 traps, we hauled 23 lobsters of which 6 keepers.  You’ll remember that previously we had NOT topped the bait bags off, but instead dumped everything that was left overboard, and rebaited with salted herring. The salted herring at that time had been sitting unrefrigerated in my basement for over a week, stewing in their own increasingly noxious juices (seriously). We baited my final trap exclusively with freshly-caught mackerel to see if that would make a difference in yield.

That final trap, which had the berried female, one short, and nine menacing crabs, did no significantly better or worse than the other traps. Ultimately, though it’s terrible to work with, requires labor intensive clean-up of the boat, and keeps us reeking for hours, no days, after hauling, the noxious herring might be ok for bait. Or maybe the more important thing is to empty out the bait bags, instead of freshening them up?

Our sample size is probably far too small to be deriving any general principles regarding the preferences of lobsters. But I guess that was the conclusion that A. came to already said in the previous post… ho hum.

More at the Bait Log.