7/28/2010 0600 Woods Hole. Another Fish Story. For the last several days I've been grandfathering a bit more than usual. Jun Wan and her two girls have been visiting, along with Constance and Urana, giving the Green House plenty of occupants. So Sala and I have moved out to our friend Ruth's grey shingled rambling home down in the marshes along Gardiner Road towards town. Aside from mosquito's as big as swamp rats in the backyard, its a bucolic place. The desk I'm writing on has an additional emotional charge, because its where I studied, three hours a day, for my last Boards in Family Practice, and where I'll likely do it again in a few short years. The days have been hot, presumably part of whatever uncontrolled experiment we are still conducting in energy mis-use, and yet just now its perfect; T shirt weather, and the sun is just up over the trees on the high ground to the East.
Yesterday Urana and Constance had a 3:35 bus back to their lives, and it ended up to be Jun Wan, Amalia,Seiami, and Aniri who were waiting on the yacht club dock to go out fishing. The two older girls wanted to sit up front. Seiami was happy to sit close to mom. I ran the boat and fastened the life preservers. The day swirled around us, blues of skies and water, brown and green along the seaweed line, and the details and textures of a busy summer oceanway. It was sailing weather, too, with a wind that had shifted all the way around from N in the earlier morning to SE by the time we had passed across Great Harbor, around the navigational mark off Grassy Island (not a blade since the 1938 hurricane, but names stick) and on out across the channel to Great Ledge. Smaller yachts that run up on Middle or Red Ledges out in the Hole generally pass over Great Ledge without even realizing their peril. The same ambiguity of navigational bouys ( you are LEAVING New Bedford, not RETURNING to Woods Hole, which was a small spermaceti processing and shipbulding village when the system was set up) and what appears to be an inviting open space of water are what cause the problems. The great ledge is the right depth to trap unwary larger craft, such as tugboats and fishing draggers. But the rapid flow of water over the ledges of rock and sand are also what attract fish, and so here we are, screaming as we hit the waves smashing spray to both sides and holding on tightly as we have been told.
I get to an imaginary spot near a red marker bouy, just North of the channel. Its time to fish, and time to go to work today. More tomorrow.
8-15-10 Well tomorrow was a bit of a time coming, but to resume, o best beloved...
The imaginary spot is downcurrent from Great Ledge, that would be West at this tide. Its a kind of scup pasture, sandy with some bottom weed, but few rocks for the rig to get hung up on.
We fish generally with the basic rig that my father Burr introduced: I imagine he got it from his father, or some one elses. You take a arms worth of strong line...he used to use something he called 'cuttyhunk'..which was the local term for a braided cord made of linen and tarred...it was flexible, and although it hardened up in cold weather stayed fairly flexible, and wouldnt rot for several seasons if you stored it in a reasonably dry place. And it didnt become brittle with age. It also didnt cut your hands when used as a handline...and when I started fishing with Burr, he mostly use a handline. Each year, after we had reached Woods Hole and done the work to get the dory int he water, he would stop by Sam Cahoons fishmarket, which also sold essentials like tarred line. He would buy a packet of a dozen or so #2 fish hooks, and several 'hanks' of the tarred line, plus perhaps some lead 'banks' sinkers.
To make each fishing rig, he would cut off a short piece of 1 x 4 pine, or more often go by the MBL Carpenter Shop, which shared a big old wooden building on the other side of the MBL Marine Railway from the garage that housed the two Supply Department trucks. Hilton had another Marine Railway right on the other side of the Carpenter Shop. The Machine Shop that shared the building was separated by a small inside door...and both shops had barn doors at the front. The Carpenter Shop kept a barrel of wood scraps near the front door. Perhaps anyone could have wandered in and just taken a piece, but for my father it was always necessary to say hello, ask perhaps about the weather or some social issue in town, or a carpentry problem, and then ask it was OK to take a few pieces from the scrap barrel. I imagine he had done this as a young man when he first came to Woods Hole to work in L.V. Heilbrun's lab. He was certainly still doing it when he was Director of the Lab years later.
With the foot long piece of soft sugar pine, he would use a drawshave to create a waist, and then indent the ends, either with a knife, or a wood rasp after first sawing two cuts in each end to define the indentation. This was to hold the line which would be wrapped around the wood, end to end. He would usually use a Dremel tool with a burr to carve initials in the wood...just in case it fell overboard and floated away. Then he would tie a knot around the waist of the wooden reel he had created, and wind on the line...about 200 feet of it. I particularly liked the ones with a bit more line...they looked, and felt fat and prosperous. He'd cut off the line with the jack-knife he always carried, and tie on a swivel with a snap clip...various sizes also for sale in the back depths of Sam Cahoons...or at Eastmans Hardware in Falmouth.
The handlines thus constructed would last at least several years, unless we lost them, they were attacked by mice attracted to the residual fish goo, or they simply rotted.
The rigs he generally made each summer; the hooks, made of common steel, would rust, as he told me they would rust and eventually fall out of the mouths of fishes unfortunate enough to get hooked and then fortunate enough to break or bite through the line. He also mentioned concern over the lead of the sinkers that we lost when the rigs became hopelessly stuck in some rock 50 feet down and the line had to be broken or cut off. Lead , he informed me, was not part of animal physiology, as was iron and most of the other metal we used. The conversation went on through the concept of alloys (later revived when I read about Paul Reveres work with pewter), how Mercury could be liquid, what a enzyme cofactor might be adding, and the concept of enzyme catalysis. Of course I dont have a detailed memory of all of such conversations, but I remember enough to realize, as I revisit Burr's life, how much he shaped my own.
Its not that Burr was particularly a talker. He believed that fishing was best practiced in respectful silence, even before Lou Geherigs disease took away his capacity for speech. But when he was doing something, like making a fishing rig, he generally explained what he was doing as he went along. I think this is the role of the journeyman teacher, the expert mentor of today. This 'just in time' verbal commentary and often reflection in action on the task in hand is so uniquely human. Well, perhaps songbirds teaching their young how to sing are doing something more similar than we once realized.
To make the actual fish catching part of the handline, you cut off a piece of tarred line about one arms length, and double it. Slip the looped end through the eye of a swivel of appropriate size, maybe a #4, and tie it on with a double knot, leaving two loose ends and a loop. Then tie on two hooks, perhaps a #2 and a #4 to the two loose ends, using a simple slip knot but incorporating the shank of the hook for stability. Attach the clip of the line to the swivel of the hook rig, wind it all around the wooden reel and secure the hooks by embedding their ends in the soft wood. When you are ready to use it, choose an appropriate sinker for the conditions, and pass the loop of line through the opening on the sinker and around the sinker to secure it. Ready to fish!!
We all fished with those handlines, usually kept in a wooden bucket purchased in the little store upstairs in the Supply Department building. It wasnt really a public store, but for Investigators at the MBL who had an account they would make sales from the stock they kept for the Department. These buckets came in standard sizes, really half barrels with a metal bale and a wooden handle. They were painted a light grey, the standard MBL color in those days.
I don't think I had seen a plastic bucket yet.
Of course, to illustrate the fishing trip of those days fully, I need to recall the dory, the oars, and the Scott Atwater motor that we acquired after simply rowing out of eel pond into the harbor for several years...the years that are on the dim and uncertain edge of memory now.
So, instead, lets come back to Jun Won, Seiami, Aniri, Amalia and Alan out on the edge of Great Ledge on a West tide, baiting up our hooks.
The rigs I make out of 80 pound monofilament flurocarbon these days, but the measurement is the same, the potentially polluting lead sinkers are still in use, and the hooks are still chosen to rust, rather than the much longer lasting stainless steel. Now I have a medical knowledge of the hazards of lead in the human body, and a physiological understanding of iron metabolism. You can still buy tarred line, but now the smell is blunted by the plastic bag it comes wrapped in. And nothing except my memory can illustrate the intoxicating combination of tarred line, fishing nets, fish and diesel products that were the defining smells of Sam Cahoons fish market. Or the conversation, which I could only decipher in fragments, that flew back and forth across the filleting table where Mattie, the master fish cleaner, turned whole fish into rack and fillet with single strokes of the knife he sharpened on the sharpener hung from his belt over the stained rubber apron he wore. Or the creak of the pulleys and the grinding drag of the winches hoisting buckets of fish out of the boat holds. Fresh fish from the trap boats that pulled fish our of the wiers out in Buzzards Bay North of The Knob. Frozen cod, yellowtail, haddock and hake from the holds of the draggers that went out to Georges Bank. And on a good day, no baskets, but instead greasy rope slings that were fastened around the already dressed carcasses of swordfish,Xyphias gladius,harpooned off Nomans Land, or along Monomoy.
Dammit, can't you just stick to the fishing at hand?? The squid has thawed, and I cut big hunks of it to bait up the #2 hooks that seem best for the small mouth of scups. But I also put a larger hook on one of the two leaders of each rig...as Albert Szent Gyorgi is believed to have said, 'its better to not catch a large fish than to not catch a small fish'. So, guided by Taj Mahal and Albert, I use a big hook and a big hunk of bait.
Now we use rods...with spinning reels, because young or inexperienced fisherpeople don't get backlashes as theydo with conventinal reels. I pass one to Jun Won, and one each to Aniri and Amalia. First I demonstrate; put the baited rig with sharp hooks carefully over the side, fishing as we drift, so choosing the side to keep the line from going under the boat. Open the bale, and let out line until it curls in the water (the very words from my childhood book about the big fisherman and the little fisherman). Then engage the bale, or lift the line with a finger tostop more from going out, and gently jog the pole up and down to make the sinker 'thunk' on the bottom. When you can't feel the 'thunk', let out some more line. When you feel something jerking, jerk back. If the rod starts bending and jerking, you've hooked a fish, and reel it in.
All very simple, but difficult for small hands to execute the un accustomed motions. And how can you really tell you are on the bottom? And how do you know when your bait is all gone? And how can you tell these are really fish biting and not just the sinker bumping on rocks or sand ridges?
However, we do catch fish. After several drifts and motoring back into position, Amalia has caught several keeper size, 10.5 inches or more, and one 'dinnerplate' sized fish. We've caught a number of small black bass and scup, kissed them, and put them back. The kissing is a bit of a cultural change. Burr's practice was to spit on the small fish, and admonish them to go home and report that something larger was needed. He also spoke to all seagulls who stopped by to land on the water and wait for throwaway bits of bait, calling them Charlie in a familiar sort of way. Sometimes, with badly hooked and damaged small fish, he would deliberately fling the fish towards the gull, who usually got the offering. But now we kiss the fish...I think my daughter Tirien was the one who updated the practice.
Amalia is finished for the moment, so I am fishing her rod. Seiami is sitting in Jun Wons lap and fishing their rod.
'Mama, the rod is bending', I head Seiami say.
'Good' says Jun Won. She is looking elsewhere, not very excited.
'Its REALLY bending!' says Seiami.
Jun Won and I both look, impressed with the young intensity.
The rod is bend almost double. Line is running off the reel, released by the drag mechanism that stops the line from breaking, or the rod from being pulled out of Seiami's hands.
Jun Won grabs the rod, too, and tried to reel. But the fish is pulling too hard. She hands the rod to me, and settles Seiami in a better position.
For a moment I hold the rod. Feel the fish. Its a strong pull, interspersed with strong discrete tugs, not the rapid fluttering tugs of a scup at all. And not the dogged pull of the dogfish, or the flat pull of a flounder, or the...well..bass like resistance of a black bass. In fact, it feels like...
a Bluefish. But on cut squid bait? Oh well...
I reset the drag, to be sure the fish is less likely to break off, and hand the rod back to Jun Won and Seiami. Together, they start reeling. The fish continues to fight...the line cuts back and forth throught he water. Slowly they get the fish closer and closer. Then, creating a gasp from all of us, the fish surfaces, and jumps out of the water! Definitely a bluefish, and a nice sized one too. For this, we have a net. Keep your rod tip high, I remind Jun Won. Keep it high and bring the line around towards me. Not too fast, let the fish get a little more tired.
Finally, after several passes, the fish turns on its side in the water. Its time. Jun Won carefully leads it back around, I dip with the net, and spash, clatter, the fish and the net are in the boat, and we are all whooping and shouting!!
Bluefish are actually dangerous inside the boat, with a reflex jaw snapping that will cut right through a finger. So I use a billy club that is in the boat for this purpose, knocking the fish unconscious..probably killing it with a brain contusion. In any case, the fish stops thrashing, but I dont put any living part of me anywhere near the mouth, using a pliers to take out the hook, and then bleeding the fish into a bucket.
Well, we catch a few more fish, scup and one small flounder, but the big event has happend. Shortly thereafter, Tirien and Sala call on the phone, announcing that they can see us. Sure enough, there they are on Juniper Point, picking up Joaquin from a play date at the family living int he Airplane House..attributed to Frank Lloyd Wright but actually the work of Emslie et al, another Chicago architectural firm influenced by Sullivan ( I learn from the internet you can rent it for $15,000 a week). We talk, but Jun Won gestures not to tell them about the bluefish. Instead, we hatch out a plot.We will return, bravely calm about catching only a few small scup. Then, in the yard, we will reveal the giant bluefish and Amalia's giant scup. Tirien will be surprised, and the girls giggle with delight at how much fun that will all be.
And thats the fish story for today.