Urban Outcast Music Discovery, Song #9, I'm Gonna Miss Her by Brad Paisley
(The fishing classic, I was a fan before I even understood why anyone would want to go fishing)
When darkness descends at 4 pm, as it seems to do for months on end this far north, you need to think creatively to discover socially acceptable nocturnal activities. For me this meant a couple trips to Westport for crabs. Contrary to where your brain might have gone, this did not mean trawling the fishermen's dive bars without a thick dusting of bleach and carrying Purell in weaponized form.
The goal was to try out a couple new crab traps that tie directly onto a fishing rod you are not very fond of. I had done some scouting and identified the "finger jetties" as a potential target. The thing to remember though is that satellite images are showing you those beautiful, calm days. When I arrived in the rain and wind, the waves were crashing along the top of my supposed peaceful perch. Retreating to the stubbiest of the fingers brought the waves under control but the current was too strong and kept sending my gear into tumble cycles. After sliding off a couple boulders and getting soaked, even I had to concede this was my dumbest idea in a long, long time. So I put the crab gear away and doubled down by tying on a glow worm jig for some sea bass fishing because... well its hard to explain so I wont try.
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| The only taker was an undersized red rock crab who didn't think being out of the water was any reason to give up on the chicken |
The second trip to Westport a month later was much, much calmer and I focused on finding public access points inside the marina. For reasons beyond me, the marina had turned into a crab ghost town. The commercial crabbing fleet was unloading their catches all night but my plan to catch the sneaky crabs who jumped ship was a complete bust. All I got were good night pics of the boats and a little extra space in the freezer as a batch of the salmon heads were used up.
The last night trip was a visit to the ever reliable razor clam beaches. I still roll with the clam gun but Sensei was showing me up with some speedy shovel work. Just remember that you can't mess around too much with the camera, these guys will head back down for round two!
