Getting Ready

It doesn’t always rain here. The day before the storm I told you about in the last post was clear and sunny. I went down and talked to some of the Fishermen and took a few shots of all the gear in place for tomorrow. At least, assuming everything goes to plan it will be tomorrow.

The Harbour is full of boats these days – a few from other parts of this Province and neighbouring ones. They are all clean and prepped for the Lobster Season. Some are brand new – a few of the close up shots were taken on a local’s brand new $1 million boat. It’s amazing.

Things won’t look as neat and tidy in a few weeks. I’m not saying the boats will be dirty later on in the Season – but they won’t be as shiny and they will have scrapes and dents which reflect how hard they’ve been working.

I don’t know how many thousands of traps there are or how many miles of rope. I do know that each one of those cages had to have bait put into it – there were a lot of cold, smelly men around here yesterday.

The bait will be familiar to you – it consists of the now defrosted herring that was so obsessively captured this summer.

The weather forecast for tomorrow is not good. Oh the snow and rain won’t be a problem, but the wind could force a delay in the Season’s opening.

The big hope is that the wind will hold off long enough for these boats to get the traps out. They can come back and sit out the storm feeling comfortable that the first actual fishing task has been done. The boats typically put out the traps and then come home for a number of hours anyway before going back out to empty and reset the cages.

This yellow contraption is relatively new – certainly to me. I don’t remember any of them from last year.

They’re used to get a Fisherman back out of the water if he goes overboard. The unfortunate crew member grabs it and pulls himself into the net – then the boat can haul him out of the water using their winch. I know one guy who went overboard last Season – it took 3 men to get him back into the boat without one of these devices.

If they get the go ahead to start tomorrow I’ll go down and try and get some photos. If not, maybe I’ll just get you pics of our latest storm. 🙂