There will be pot shifting storms before the lobster season, I know that.
Yet the sea looks so tranquil. So inviting.
It’s bloody cold though, I trailed my fingers in it yesterday. Not even crabs stir much at that temperature. There have been small crabs and lobsters in the nets though...
I should know better.
I have had four pots out over winter.
One pair got lost after tangling with someone elses’ gear.
Don’t invent enemies. I had.
I thought he had cut mine loose. I found that I'd been wrong.
I met him at sea the other day.
He hadn’t managed to haul his either and had enlisted another boat with a heftier winch to try. The rope parted, taking both his and my pots.
The sea is a wide emotional canvas: it's all too easy to invent paranoid scenarios,and then glue them in place by being hostile.
The other pair are stuck fast too, probably wedged under another rock.
I found a tangle of pot-rope, encrusted with barnacles this autumn, with tails shredded where the pots had been chafed off. It seems to be a local occurrence.
And here I am, talking about putting new pots out.
I have only made 7 so far. I can’t afford to lose too many.
The nets have gone quiet.
I glimpsed a seal checking one, but can’t blame him: he was checking my net BECAUSE the fish have gone quiet.
I caught a shag.
It was alive and struggling, its leg twisted well into the floatline. I was loathe to cut that. I managed to get him out unharmed, eventually, by cutting a few key meshes.
I noticed today the diving birds fish more actively in calm weather. Maybe that too is because the fish are quieter. Maybe I'm just noticing them more. In my shame.
There’s been a pile of weed. Not enough wind to keep it on the shore.
In amongst it, my last catch was good though: a 6 pound codling and a pollack.
I’m getting too many lightning crabs: I hate ripping them to bits, but they take an age to entangle otherwise. I think I'll have to start eating them.
I've been wondering about setting a net a lot further out. On the sand. It should be too early for that reported plague of spidercrabs to have arrived, but I still fear a dollop of doggies.
ANY excuse to venture onto that idyllic blue sea.
I put a pair of pots out yesterday.
I have roped up another pair.
The nets are cleaned of the worst of that weed, and ready to go.
It’s not time.
I should know better...
