Life With A Fisherman

It was a very long night. I tossed and turned thinking about my boat and that mean, old man “Captain Ben.” As it turns out, he wasn’t the mean man that I had thought he was at all. He was just a retired sea captain and set in his ways. He had never married and had no children. And from what Dad told me, he was one of the best people who had ever lived to be out to sea with. I couldn’t stop thinking about a statement he had made about the day he had lost Salty to the sea. He had said he was hiding his bounty. What in the world was he talking about? And what the heck is a crawl trap?

Well, the sun was finally coming up, and I could smell the cooking of bacon. I got myself dressed and out into the kitchen. Dad was sitting at the table, talking about the sails of his boats. From what I could make out, they where a mess from a storm that they had encountered out whaling. He was telling Mom that the winds were coming in on them from all sides, and the waves were 30-footers. The main sails on two ships had torn, and they had done all they could do to get them in. If it weren’t for the crew, they would have been lost. Then Dad looked at me and smiled. I loved hearing his stories of the sea. I had always wanted to go out with him, and he always told me he would bring me out when I turned 14. I was eating my eggs and bacon as fast as I could. Dad asked what the rush was. “I’m off to Captain Ben’s to build traps. He wants me there at first light. Dad replied, “Traps? What kind of traps?” “I don’t know,” I said. “He said something about crawls. I looked at Mom and asked, “What is a crawl?” She and Dad started laughing. Dad said, “Oh, you’ll see, Cap. You’ll see. You had better get going. First light is near.” And with that, out the door I went.

The sun was coming up over the lagoon, and the sky was blue. It was a beautiful morning on the bluff as I ran to the captain’s house around that lagoon. There were no roads per se, just horse and wagon trails. Those were the days. As I rounded the marsh, I could see Captain Ben cutting bamboo in the woods next to his house. “Good morn to ya, young Cappy,” he shouted. “Are yee ready for trap making?” He handed me a machete and told me to cut bamboo. “We need them half-inch round and four-foot long. Cut a bunch and pile them on that bench in the barn.” Without another word, I started cutting. “It takes about 100 poles to make a trap,” he yelled, “and we are making 10 traps. “Wow,” I thought to myself, “that’s a lot of bamboo.” Captain Ben sang, “There’s crawls to trap and bounty to be made.” Then I asked what a crawl is. “EYEE, you’ll see in due time, young Cappy. You’ll see in due time.”

About three hours passed, and there was a huge pile of bamboo on the bench. “That’s enough bamboo, young Cappy. Let’s get to making the traps.” Captain Ben grabbed a big ball of twine. We started laying out the bamboo on the table. “Now watch me make one. I’ll show you only once,” he said. Then he started weaving the bamboo together and tying the ends with the twine. He built a two-foot-by-four-foot box with no top. He left two inches of space between each bamboo. Then he cut four square holes in the box, two on one side and two on another. From the bottom of the box up to the start of the hole was about six inches. He didn’t say one word for about two hours as he made this box. I had never seen anything like this. I kept thinking, “What are these thing we were building?” But I didn’t ask. “There now,” the captain said, “do yee think you can build the box ? I shook my head yes. “Well, start building then,” he said. “We need nine more. I’ll start working on the tops. Without another word, I started making boxes, and he started making tops for the boxes. It took about 10 hours to make the boxes, and when we were done, he pulled out a net that he had made from the twine. He had taken the twine and tied it all together, making a net that had two-inch holes in it. He laid it out flat and said, “See this!” It was about two-foot high and four-foot long. “We need nine more of these nets. Take this twine home and make them up. When ya get them done, come back and we will finish the traps, young Cappy.”

And he turned and went into his house. Not another word was said. I walked home with the twine. I didn’t have it in me to run. That was a long day making boxes. I worked all the next day making nets. By the end of that day, all I could see were little squares everywhere I looked. That is tidiest work to say the least. The next morning, I went to meet Captain Ben with the nets that I had made. He told me that I’d done a fine job, and it was time to tie the traps. He had five traps all done. While I was making the nets, he had been finishing up five traps. “See how to do it?” he asked. And pointed at the inside of a box. He had tied the netting from one side to the other from the opening that had been cut in the walls of the boxes. “Start making funnels with the bottoms open.” The two sides were connected together in the middle. He explained that the crawl climbs up through the outside of the wall and goes into the hole, then falls through the bottom of the net into the trap and can’t get out.

We worked together tying the nets and piling the boxes on top of one another. A few hours passed, and we were done. I looked at Captain Ben and said, “Now what?” He smiled. “It’s time to go fishing. We need bait for the traps.” Now, I love fishing, but I had no idea what was in store for me. Captain Ben had his own way for getting crawl bait. He pointed at a barrel and told me to put it in the wagon as he set the horse to the hitch. In the wagon was a five-foot pole with a net on it. I asked what it was for, and he smiled as he said, “That’s our fishing pole. I’ll show yee.” And he laughed. We set out on the upper trail that leads to the head of the lagoon. That’s where the fresh water meets the salt water. It was spring, and the heron were running into the fresh water by the thousands to spawn. “Captain, are we going to get heron for bait?” I asked. “Yes, we are, young Cappy. They make a great crawl bait.”

Now I knew what the net was for; I had done this with my mom before. Mom loves to get heron for smoking to put in the root cellar. We normally get enough for the year. Then Mom smokes them in the smoker Dad built. Those were the days. Anyhow, we reached the run, and it was just starting to get dark. Captain Ben said the heron run was great at sunset, and God, he was right. They where there by the thousands, I could see them under the swirls of water. I grabbed the net and started toward the heron. “Wow! Hold on, young Cappy,” the captain yelled. “ Hold on! I have a trick to getting my bait.” I stopped and went back to the wagon. “You stay right here, Cappy. I’ll call you when I’m ready.” “Now, what’s he up to?” I thought to myself as he walked down to the water. He kept walking around, looking on the shore and then looking into the water. Then he bent over and came up with a flat rock. It was a good-size rock and looked heavy. “This will work out nice,” he said as he held it up to show me. Then I couldn’t see what he was doing. His back was to me, and he was doing something in front of himself. Then he looked all around us. “OK!” he yelled. “Hold your ears!” He turned toward me, and then I could see what he was holding. It was dynamite. He tied the rock to it so it would sink. Before I could say anything, he yelled, “Get ready, Cappy.” And he lit the fuse with his corncob pipe. Then he threw it right in the middle of the swirl of water. BOOM! It happened so quick. The water sprayed up about 20 feet in the air. Captain Ben started laughing as he yelled, “Bring the dip net and start dipping, young Cappy!” All I can say is that there was a barrel full of heron floating. “Wow,” I yelled. The captain looked right at me and said, “That’s how we get crawl bait. No fuss, no muss, young Cappy.”

We filled the big barrel up with heron, and it was over flowing into the wagon. “Come on and get in,” Captain Ben said. “I’ll take ya home.” I asked the captain, “Are we going to use all these heron for bait?” “No, we are not. We will only use three per trap. We have 10 traps, so we only need 30 for bait. I’ll give the rest to you to give your mother. There is enough left over to smoke up for the year. You can help your mom smoke them up while we let our bait get smelling good in the sun. The crawl like the rotten-smelling bait. The more it stinks, the more they like it. We will set our traps in two days. We reached the house, and I went running in to tell Mom we had heron to smoke. Mom came out to the wagon and looked at Captain Ben. “So that’s what that load noise was,” she said as she laughed. “You’ve been up to your old tricks, Captain Ben.” He replied, “We have plenty for the smoker.” “Well let’s get at it,” Mom said. “We have a lot of fish cleaning to do.”