Today were featuring the "sea side" of a Chauncey Creek story, as I spent a lovely day on the ocean with my good friend John Waldron, for a day fishing lobsters off the coast of Maine. Aboard with us was his faithful fisherman friend, Steve Elmo, a guy who doesn't say much, as he keeps unbelievably busy tending the chores aboard the STEPHANIE LYNN.
John's facility is located on Chauncey Creek in Kittery Maine and is situated next door to a locally favorite lobster and sea food restaurant. John's fishing boat the "STEPHANIE LYNN" is 36 feet long and 12 feet wide, big enough and safe enough to steam many miles offshore. It is well equiped with all the modern navigational equipment and is Coast Guard inspected and approved as a sea worthy vessel.
John also has a kennel full of pretty good rabbit dogs too, and we'll do a story with him later this year as we're planning a hunting trip this coming October. But today we're out on the high seas on a boat a wee bit smaller that the 300 foot Destroyer I once lived on during my tour of duty as a navy sailor some 48 years ago. Todays trip couldn't have been any nicer with cool dry air, under blue skies and a soft breeze of that salt air. So anchors a weigh!

The day began at the mooring where John keeps his "boat" attached to the new building he just built to accommodate his fishing business. This whole scene is amazingly beautiful, tucked away harbored inland a short ways from Kittery Point on the Chancey Creek River at the mouth of the bay. John lives and kennels his hounds inland not more than a quarter of a mile away from this mooring. I might add here too that John is a proven valuable member of the Salmon Falls River Beagle Club in Lebanon Me. We'll present John and his dogs later on this website after our hunt this fall.  But John is all business as I arrived for the trip at sea, and he and his one man crew are "turning to" as the sailors say, loading bait aboard the boat.

The bait of choice for most if not all lobster fisherman in this area is herring. Big ships set sail to catch these small fish to support the lobster industry and the bait is fairly expensive to buy, but that's all part of the cost of the lobster business. Another issue that poses a burden on the fisherman are all the rules and regulations imposed on the industry by various governmental agencies.  In this photo, Steve guides a barrel of bait as John handles the winch from above lowering the critters to a large holding box on the boat. The holding box was loaded with 6 of these barrels and that kinda topped off the "bait box".

After loading the bait, we "shipped out" heading for the fishing grounds. Steve was busy washing down the deck at the stern of the boat to eliminate some residue that spilled on the deck during the filling of the "bait box" back at the dock. At the bottom left of this photo you'll see a short chimney like tube that is sticking in the air. This is where the caught lobster are dropped into, that leads to a live well used to keep the lobsters cold and healthy, as sea water is pumped and circulated through the well to assure the best quality MAINE LOBSTERS money can buy.

Fishing for lobsters can be a pretty hazardous occupation at times and safety is a major consideration every time a fisherman "casts off" for the fishing grounds. Note the blue item in the picture on John's upper left shoulder! This is the handle of a knife that is in a sheath fixed upside down ready to be used in time of an emergency. I'm writting this story on August 14, 2006 and just last week a local lobster fisherman got caught up in his gear as the traps were being dropped over the side and the man unfortunately lost his life. Wet slippery decks, tossing and turning, churning seas test ones balance and there's always a chance for an accident. This photo shows John with the first lobster caught, and as this day went, it turned out to be a pretty good fishing.

The catching of the lobsters occurs by luring them into special wire traps where sacks of bait are hung. There's a law for everything in this business, so depending on how far out to sea you fish, determines how many traps you can fish on one "string of traps". A string consists of a long length of rope perhaps 300 feet long where 8 traps are secured at evenly spaced intervals. On each end of this long rope are lobster pots or buoys that mark the ends of the string of traps and that float enableing the fisherman to find his traps when he returns several days later. GPS systems are also used to guide the fisherman to the traps; a useful tool especially in poor weather.

Once the fisherman spots his "lobster pots" those floating color coded markers of his, he steers the boat up to a "pot" and hooks the rope that hold the eight traps and begins hauling them into the boat with the help of a winch. As each trap surfaces, it is pulled aboard and the lobsters that got caught are measured for length, sexed, kept or released. If they are too small, or if they are too big, they are put back in the sea. Females with eggs are notched and released. Notching the middle part of their shell at the tip of the tail makes them illegal to harvest, and this helps assure a good supply of lobsters for future fishing. As the traps are pulled aboard, the lobsters are harvested as just stated and the traps are rebaited. Then the traps are moved to the back of the boat and are queued up side by side until they are all aboard and ready to be dropped into the sea once again. Each fisherman has his own way of doing this as each boat is a bit differently configured. John's boat holds six on the "fantail" and two on the "starboard side". After John maneuvers his boat to the selected drop site via a depth monitoring device, the traps are cast off one by one in spaced intervals. The traps are weighted in such a way that as they descend to the bottom, they right themselves up so they sit on the ocean floor correctly.

The day couldn't have been scripted any better, and I thoroughly enjoyed being on the open seas again and instead of bobbing up and down on a "Man O' War" like I once did years ago, I got to watch a MAINE LOBSTER FISHERMAN going about his business. After the fishing was over, John dropped me off at the dock in the Kittery harbor where my truck was parked. This ended a really fun day at sea with the Captain of the STEPHANIE LYNN of CHAUNCEY CREEK. I'll finish this story sometime in October after a hunt with the Chauncey Creek Beagles.
No man could find a nicer person on this earth than John Waldron. He's always willing to lend a helping hand and has been a valuable member of the Salmon Falls River B.C. We consider it an honor to call him friend and LORD willing we'll spend many many more good times with John in the days ahead.
"Grant Lord that you Bless this man and keep him safe from harms way as he fishes the sea that you created according to your word" Amen.