It sounds easy enough to mash up already rotten fish for bait. But when mass quantities of shrimp bait are needed on a daily basis, preparing bait becomes quite a process. For years Cap has pulped his herring manually, using a garden edger (a blade on a long handle) and chopping the herring in a fish tray. This process is most effective if the tray bottom is just covered in herring, no more than that. We began the season chopping our bait in this manner and, as you can imagine, it took hours upon hours to pulp enough bait for just one day (150 bags worth).
So Cap started searching for his "dream pulper." Actually, he'd been looking in Uncle Henry's for months in anticipation of shrimping season, but to no avail. He was searching for some machine--anything!--that would effectively pulverize large quantities of herring. Many shrimp trappers use meat grinders with the hand crank hooked up to an electric drill. This makes life easier, but it still takes some time to get through a barrel (5 bushel) of herring.
Then our prayers were answered. One afternoon upon returning to the dock after a hard day of shrimping we were greeted by some very enthusiastic fishermen friends. They had big smiles on their faces. The sternman explained how he had found a woodchipper on the side of the road for free! He had picked it up and they tried their hand at chipping bait.
Well there is a very important attachment where wood chips are expelled from the machine that deflects the chips down instead of straight out. This attachment apparently shot off as soon as the herring pulp hit it and the thing was firing pulverized herring clear across their lawn with an 80 ft trajectory! You can imagine the mess. His dogs sure liked it.
With a simple bungee securing the attachment, however, that machine was the best bait chippah in town. These guys were tearing through a barrel in all of 15 minutes whereas the meat grinder guys were taking five times that long. You don't even want to know how much faster it was than our chopping routine. Our buddies offered that we may use it and we jumped at the chance.
You should have seen us the first day chipping bait. We were smiling the whole time, it was so much fun. Part of the pleasure in it was saving hours upon hours of work chopping the fish manually. But part of it was just the primitive satisfaction of destroying things. The roar of the chipper echoed through the whole harbor. Fishermen came down to watch it at work. Someone even took pictures of us chipping bait, which we got a kick out of. Sure 'nough that beast devoured 3 barrels in just under an hour. 'Magine!
In fact, we just finished chipping bait today. Today's a day on land since there is a gale warning and it's gusting to 30 kt. It doesn't look like this easterly storm is going to let up readily. Tomorrow it's supposed to gust to 50 kt with 20 ft seas and Friday isn't looking any better. This is bad news for shrimping. We might get to haul on Saturday, in which case half of the traps will have set for 4 very turbulent nights. That means that there will be a lot of dead shrimp and most likely plenty of vein shrimp. There will be sorting to do. Cap is talking about bringing his son out with us to pick.
The good news is that we will have a day off! Maybe even 2! Considering that we haven't had a day off since January 23, I think it is about time to rest. Cap is sick with the flu and needs rest more than anything right now. He wouldn't even tell me he was sick. His wife came down to tell me today when we were almost through prepping bait! Stubborn fisherman.
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