The Next Occasional Fishing Thread [Bandersnatch]

Hello Piscators and Piscatrixes, this is the next occasional fishing thread. Occasional in this context means every three Saturdays at pretty much this time. I shall continue to purloin themes from other threads, though I’ve changed one of the victims this time. As always, the content is a suggested jumping off point. All things fishy are on topic. If you’ve been fishing throw your clothes staight in the washer, don’t contaminate the hamper.

So, who dis Marine fighter pilot?

What I’ve been thinking about this week is fishing that isn’t for fish. I have fished for lobster, f’rinstance. To my shame, I have never raked clams. A PNW ‘ette was going on about a local clam called a gooey duck or somesuch, and razor clams, and others. I have also never raked oysters, steamers, quahogs, nor hardshells.

Have you done non-fish fishing? Crayfish? (Crawfish, crawdads, mudbugs…jebuz you people can be persnickety). Dropped a crab trap off a pier? Is there such a thing as recreational shrimping? How about noodling, do we have any Morons missing fingers? Anyone ever poached elvers?

This is what clam raking looks like:

Now I did attempt a fishing today. I wanted to bring fresh content. And also test out a new line. I made a few casts but an East wind on the Cape pretty much shuts everything down so it was just a little casting practice. Until I remembered that my real mission was to bring you fine Morons the delectable results of clam raking, so this week’s next plagiarism is from the Food Thread:

Those are fried whole clams, sometimes referred to as whole belly clams because it’s important to not only eat the clams but also what the clams just ate. That’s what I have to show for today, so I’m going to claim that I drove three hours each way to eat lunch and show you morons something.

Back to the one thing I have done, lobstering. Lobstering is a wonderfully messy blue collar kind of fishing. You can get bait at the dock from the bait truck where all the real lobstermen are. It’s herring, already starting to rot, and you buy it by the tote. An old dawg taught me that if you put it in 5 gallon buckets with salt – one layer herring, one layer salt, all the way up – and the lid has a good seal, you can keep it for weeks in the summer sun without pissing off the neighbors. Past that I’d go to the fish market and trade a six-pack for the racks of fish they’d filleted, or live off the racks of fish I’d caught in other endeavors.

If you set traps too close to commercials or anyone else who thinks it’s his turf a scissorfish cuts your buoy off and the pot is gone. The commercials don’t want to come in close among the rocks, so you set there. Even used pots are $50, you don’t want to lose too many. Hauling pots is a mess, a slime of gunk builds up on the ropes and spills onto deck. At the end of the day, if it’s a good day, you get lovely lovely lobster.

So do you do any non-fish fishing? Do you have any fish fish fishing to tell us about? This here is the fishing thread, have at it.

posted by CBD at 08:57 PM

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