Spiders
They are around. Maybe this is when they come through here on their March North.
I have had them both inside and clinging like burglars onto pots as I lifted them; they seem pretty stupid.
I had one in the first net I set yesterday after an hour.
The cat was dramatically sick on the first one I cooked, but I picked some good meat out of those bait burglars and felt nourished rather than ill.
It was richer than the other crab, and needed a strong, salty boiling.
I gave claws to the neighbours as a taster. -Getting them to accept a live crustacean with its trail of doubts and cruelties in its preparation straight off, costs so much time in reassurances & explanations that I might as well eat it for them.
So I wasn't hesitant about eating them, just as a possible horde and what they would be like to unpick from my nets.
I met one ten foot into my first net this morning.
An ungainly, dangling thing that I pulled onboard and shook around for ages trying to find how it was caught up.
Ten crabs later, my technique was developing. If I kept the net stretched open, I had more chance of freeing them: the back is mass of spines only too glad to grab yet more net that comes its way.
I had to sacrifice some meshes today.
They are not aggressive though, so there is little to fear from the claws; unlike the other crabs who clench up like springs, but nip out fiercely. The smaller, the quicker and fiercer.
Indispersed with the crabs, who seemed to be in clusters, were bunches of dogfish.
I almost welcomed them after the danglers. Sandpaper rather than hedgehogs
It was like a parade of monsters and meanies. A Devil's Washing-line.
The dogfish writhed and the spiders scuttled in my fish-well.
After a couple of crabs and a particularly lively doggie had hopped overboard, I took to putting the spiders in a sack.
Near the end of the second net was a gleaming silvery thing like a hero from another film.
How odd.
A Bass. A perfect thing.
I got my nets in and bagged and was unloading before I saw it was gone. Somehow it had slipped overboard as I had disentangled that last Spider.
I am feeling the loss of that fish deeply.
More deeply than I can fathom.
I tap these keys with crab-sore hands and hope that film with Bass and Mullet in starring roles will come to a Bay near me soon, and the Spider Monster Epic leaves town.