Sum-Sum Summertime
Summertime is my most humorous time of the year. It’s the most enjoyable for obvious reasons, but there is more to it than just the weather. The lobsters don’t really get going till mid-summer, so I just kind of go through the motions of hauling and baiting. Every year I have the pleasure of watching the tourists as they are watching me fish. I set a few extra traps near a recreation area ‘cause it’s always good for a laugh. One morning I was hauling down there and I saw this young couple jump out of the car with a video camera. He looked about six and a half feet tall and she about four feet.
They started walking toward me as he was filming the boat. There was a big oversize lobster in the trap and I held it up. They both started a slow run toward me with him holding the camera to his eye. Unfortunately there was a trash can dead ahead. He went flying over it and crashed to his left, took her out like a bowling ball and they were piled up in a tangle, the people, the trash can and the video camera. She jump-ed up first and pulled her skirt back in place, then promptly gave him a couple of pretty good kicks.
I was only about 100 feet away and laughing as hard as I could laugh. When she figured she had his posterior pretty well booted, she wheeled around toward me; she scowled and promptly flipped me the bird about four or five times. Although she had looked pretty good with her skirt over her head, I thought better him than me and I put the boat in gear and put some water between me and that four feet of pure hell.
About the first of July, I start finding a lot of fishing lures caught on my trap warps. The mackerel are just starting to run, and when the fishing is slow they think they can haul my buoys in and help themselves to some lobsters. I fish pairs in there with real short ropes for this very reason. I get a whole bucket of lures every summer.
I was haulin’ there once on a Saturday and I nearly laughed myself silly. There were about 40 of these flatlanders fishing on the small public float and the mackerel were really running. The fishermen were in a casting frenzy. I stayed a little out of range. Every once in a while a hat would come flying out into the water and a few choice words would be spoken. I would have rather crawled through a minefield than venture on to that dock.
The damndest thing I ever saw was a fellow who hooked his buddy in the head with a big lure. They were arguing, then they went up the ramp with the pole still attached to the lure. I guess the hooker didn’t want to cut his line and he won out over the objections of the hookee. It’s a riot; I can hardly wait, it’s almost worth the damn lines and traffic jams. I hope they all have half as much fun watching me as I have watching them.
Good fishing,
Cap’t Perry Wrinkle