Deep Sea Fishing

Boothbay Harbor
No LL

Today was deep sea fishing day for Nick and I. We set out at 0800 aboard the charter vessel Blackbeard. Captain Don Stevens was in charge. The weather was foggy, but the visibility was improving by the minute as we left.

Nick and I and two other anglers looked forward to a fish dinner. Captain Don announced that our day's goal would be bluefish. Fine.

We stopped along the way by an island where we all fished for mackerel to use as bait. Nick caught seven, and I caught one. Soon we had enough and Blackbeard moved on.

Racing ahead to the punch line. The boat's net catch for this morning was one lobster (Nick's) and one sea gull (mine) but zero blue fish. There were several strikes but none landed. One blue hit Nick's bait and bit off the line. I cast out my bait one time and a gull dove down and caught the bait mid air. I had a tug of war with the gull to get my bait back.

Oh well, it goes with fishing. Some days, they just don't bite.

I have another theory. I'm a jinx. As we fished today, I tallied all the fish I ever caught in my life. I caught a guppy when I was four years old. I caught a pickerel on Lake Champlain fishing with Libby's father. I caught two catfish in Florida. That's it. After hundreds of attempts at fishing in my life, I only caught four meager fish. It was me who jinxed the luck of the whole Blackbeard boat. Sorry Nick, you should have left your granddad behind.

Below are some shots of our outing to High Island and skinny dipping in the quarry pool. In the middle is a particularly beautiful sloop sailing single handed with five sails up. At the bottom are shots from today's fishing trip.



p.s. At first I thought that 100% of all lobster boats were right-handed. I thought it might be a tradition. Not true. This month we spotted three left-handed ones. The photo below shows one.


One more shot. A sunset in Rockland harbor that turned out great.