Reaching into a trap crawling with gnarly sea creatures bearing huge claws at me has never before phased me. If you pick them up by the carapace, they can't reach you. But lately they've been getting to me. I'm not squeamish about them. They've just been bugging the hell out of me.
You see, spring lobsters are unique. They are slowly filtering towards shore after a long cold winter. Like us, they have been braving the elements (the nor'easters, the bitter cold, and the rough seas) for the past few months. Quite frankly, I've been feeling pretty weathered and grumpy myself after perhaps my hardest winter yet. Shrimping was no picnic, but think of what they went through down there! Believe me, they aren't exactly friendly. This is the most aggressive that I have ever seen lobsters. When the trap hits the rail, I can literally hear claws crunching lobster shells. When I open a trap, they are one big ball of lobster. Mercy is not foremost on their pea brains. They are ruthless. I have to watch where I put my hands. I got clamped onto on Monday so hard that I smashed the lobster down on the rail. That was just my instinct. Only then did it let go of my finger.
I've also been noticing that the females are more aggressive than the males. I'm not sure why this is, but I asked Cap if he thought that was true and he agreed without hesitation.
The lobsters are quite defensive, but not yet hungry. The water is still cold enough (42 degrees F) that their metabolism hasn't picked up. They also aren't in reproductive mode yet. When they start reproducing they get hungry for rotten herring. Therefore, in order to bait them into the traps this time of year, we have to use some really enticing morsels. Cap picks up boxes of frozen foreign fish that we transfer into trays the day before hauling. The fish vary drastically in size, so I string 3-4 on a bait line, depending on their size.
All of this trouble would be tolerable if we were actually catching something. I stand corrected, we catch plenty of lobsters, but very few of them are keepers. The great majority of the lobsters in the traps are shorts and punchtails. This is frustrating, because you pull a chain of lobsters (like that game "Barrel of Monkeys") out of a trap to measure them, throw back 8 and keep 1 puny hardshell. Monday was our first day hauling. We hauled 180 traps and our average wasn't bad at all.
At this point things can only get better. As the water warms up, the lobsters will start moving in closer to land, then they will start shedding, mellow out and build up an appetite. The only factor that won't improve is the market price. It is currently $4/lb. It should be twice that, which has been a consistent trend for the past year or so. From now on the price will start to decrease, unfortunately. We actually caught a shedder with a very soft shell on Monday, which was a little unsettling. It is too early to see shedders yet. That was the only one that I didn't have to worry about pinching me!
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