Photos of Camille, Daniel (and family and friends)

Use chicken wings and set your pots off Magnolia Bluff.  I stuffed both bait boxes with chicken wings on Thursday and dropped the crab pots.  I set one in 40 feet of water and the second deeper – perhaps 70 feet.  They were a quarter mile apart and pretty distant from the marina and I thought that might be more fruitful.

We had a short sail to the first pot.  I was motoring up to it with Camille, Daniel, and Lucy on the foredeck.  Dan was ready with the boat hook, but in trying to hand it to Camille, dropped it in the drink.  Camille raced back to the ladder to try to retrieve it.

At that point, I lost track of the pot’s buoy.  I chose to keep the engine in neutral to avoid fouling the prop until I saw it again.  No luck.  I asked Camille to look under the boat from the ladder.  She saw nothing.  Then I looked over the starboard stern quarter and saw the telltale signs of trouble.  The line to the pot led away from a spot under the the stern.  I knew I was in trouble now.

I backed down the ladder on the stern to diagnose the problem.  After having the crew turn the rudder this way and that, it was apparent to me that the crap pot line was caught in one of the worst places imaginable, between the leading upper edge of the rudder and the hull.  The buoy was on the port side and the line led off the starboard side.

I tried with lots of grunting and fussing to free the line using an oar.  I was getting wetter, so I stripped to my skivvies.  It was hard and frustrating work as the oar floated too much and had no hook or pushing saddle.

Several boats came by and we flagged one down.  We talked him into retrieving our boat hook, which they did graciously.  After a bit more grunting hanging off the ladder in my skivvies (not a pretty sight, I’m sure), I finally freed the line.

Then we couldn’t find the buoy yet again.  It was spotted four feet under the surface!  We had apparently dragged the pot into deeper water.  I glanced at the depth sounder which said 104 feet.  I only had 100 feet of line!  The pot was holding the buoy under water.

After a long and protracted retrieval attempt by Molly and I, I finally snagged the buoy and pulled the very heavy pot up 104 feet.  I was hoping for many crab as we had now wasted over 30 minutes doing the most embarrassing things to get to the stinking pot!  It revealed this:

Camille tries to free the enormous seastar

Camille tries to free the enormous seastar

It was a giant seastar with a chicken bone in its mouth.  How sad.  No crabs at all!

After that disaster, we putt-putted to our other pot.

10 males, 9 keepers!

10 males, 9 keepers!

Much better this time.  In forty feet of water, we had lots and lots of crab.  Now I’m grateful to have three licenses among us.  They were big, hard-shelled crabs.

Dan explains what happened today: