of the net from side to side and crawling about just below the plastic ring like a nest of spiders in a corner.
Tom and Georgie heaved the pot, now weighing close to one hundred and fifty pounds, up the side of the boat and balanced it on the edge with the opening tipped downwards toward the inside of the boat. George and I, shaking with excitement, stood on each side of the pot holding it steady. Tom reached inside and carefully pulled out the crabs one by one, unhooking claws and untangling spiky sharp legs from the net and tossing them into a large plastic tote.
We motored back to shore, washed down the boat and hosed out the engine, then cleaned the crab. We enjoyed another fantastic crab feast and packed the remaining bounty into Ziploc bags, stacking them neatly in the freezer for later.
After several trips with Tom, we bought an old wooden skiff with a forty horsepower Evinrude, made three crab pots out of rebar, nets, and buoys acquired from Tom‘s shed, and ventured out on our own. We quickly learned that there were crab bandits out there and leaving pots unchecked for more than two days would yield nothing but a sore back.
It was the beginning of crab season the following year and after obtaining the proper subsistence licenses and making some minor repairs to the skiff, we loaded the pots, buoys, and line and motored out to our selected spot, located mostly by trial and error and a little help from Tom.
We started out catching between seven and ten crab in each pot. We were ecstatic. The water was frigid even in the summer and pulling up the heavy pots, seemingly glued to the bottom of the ocean a hundred feet below, was backbreaking work. However, the thrill of seeing all the crabs stacked inside the pot when it breached the surface was like Christmas.
Not too crabby!
Each time we went out, we got better at it. The gaff caught the buoy on the second aim, if not the first; the lines didn’t get as tangled after practicing the coiling method; and we learned to watch the rim of the boat on the downward tip so the waves didn’t wash over the side so much. We gradually developed “sea legs” and gained a sense of boat balance, and each trip became an exciting adventure until the bandits appeared.
It was late June when the pots started coming up empty. We carefully baited and dropped each pot in the same location using the landmarks Tom told us about, but the crabs were just not in the pots. At that time, GPS was not available, so anglers used charts, mountaintops, bays, rock outcroppings, and offshore rocks for points of reference to estimate locations on the water.
We diligently hooked onto the buoys, grabbed the line and with the rhythmic motion of rocking the boat side to side, hauled up each pot about twice a week. Nothing. The crab pot bandits had beaten us to them.
Some bandits were actually courteous. They would at least rebait the pots, and one time a bandit left a six-pack of Coors in the bottom of the pot. We never caught the pot bandits but we learned to relocate the pots occasionally and check them more often. After that, we usually caught enough crab for ourselves and acquired a new fitness program in the deal.
Tom and his lovely wife eventually moved back to their hometown in Maine, for better jobs, they said. We learned from a letter received a few years later from Tom’s wife that Tom never really adjusted to the big city life. Tom found it difficult to navigate the maze of roads, maneuver the one-and-a-half-hour commute to and from work, and tolerate the constant crime in the news along with the general dinginess and blaring noise of the place. One day, Tom was killed in a car accident. They had just been planning a visit back to Kodiak, she had written, but it would not happen now.
As we ate the last crab of that season, we made a toast to Tom, the Crab King.
3 JUST PLAIN LUCKY
Complacency was not easily forgiven in a place where a single day’s adventure could take one even farther into a vast wilderness. A seemingly minor mistake was often fatal.
It was late September two years later. The once brilliant green leaves were fading, the tiny edges curling upwards, wrinkled and crispy brown. The hardy, thick blankets of wild grasses and weeds were limp with heavy dew, and the fireweed blossoms blazed red-orange, announcing the end of summer and the beginning of the crisp, cool fall season.
We were all feeling lucky as we started out on a routine day of fishing on the ocean just off the coast on the west side of the island with a friend of ours named Matt.
Matt was five feet six inches and weighed about one hundred eighty pounds, with dark curly hair drooping past his collar, brown button eyes set too close together on a long weathered face with a constant grin. He wore a brown grubby fishing vest over a tattered flannel shirt and faded blue jeans tucked into brown rubber knee boots. He also wore a consistently happy-golucky attitude that kept you upbeat for a while, and then became annoying when things needed to be serious. He lived in a cottage down the street from ours and quickly became a frequent visitor at our place. George had repaired some electrical outlets and switches in Matt’s house a few weeks before, so Matt invited us to go fishing on his eighteen-foot orange and white Glassply cabin cruiser.
Matt was full of great stories of his boyhood growing up in Kodiak. He told fascinating tales of catching big, flat, floppy fish the size of a sheet of plywood, camping out on distant island beaches, and numerous showdowns with huge Kodiak brown bears. All the cool stuff he had done on the island was fascinating.
The day was clear, calm, and sunny with a slight breeze coming from the south, perfect for a day on the ocean. We had a few fish in the box by late afternoon and decided to head for a nearby island. It was a small, out-of-the-way place with a quiet cove and a nice sandy beachhead. We often went ashore there to relax and explore the beaches for any treasures we could find.
Matt cut the engine and the boat eased onto the sandy beach as George climbed to the front of the boat and positioned the anchor on the edge of the bow. We leaped off into the shallow water, Matt holding the other end of the anchor line while George and I shoved hard on the boat, pushing it back off the beach into water deep enough to make it out past the surf dragging the attached line through the water.
Matt watched the boat slide back to the ocean for a few moments then yanked hard on the line. The anchor jerked off the bow and splashed into the water, caught on the bottom, and the boat slowed to a stop. Waves lapped gently against the sides as the boat floated taut on the line. We turned and waded back to the beach, George and I with our backpacks firmly fixed to our shoulders, Matt with nothing.
“I don’t know why you guys brought all that stuff ashore, we’re only going to be here for a while,” Matt said as he walked up the beach dragging the boat line.
“Ya never know, Matt, we might get hungry or somethin’,” answered George.
“Nah, why bother,” Matt flipped a hand in the air and kicked at a scallop shell half buried in the sand. We looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and kept on walking. We had at least learned one thing in this land of so-called opportunity: if you didn’t bring it, you ain’t got it.
Matt dragged the line over to a dead tree, tied it to a branch and began walking up the shore.
“Hey Matt, do you think that branch is gonna hold? It looks a bit weak for the boat line,” George said. Matt didn’t bother to turn around.
“Nah, it’s good enough. That boat ain’t going nowhere. Let’s go on up to that ridge and see if we can spot some deer.”
“Sure,”
