Cape Native

In memory of my father: A draggerman's tale

My father, Brian Gibbons, died seven years ago in the early morning of the Fourth of July. He was 52. He spent most of his life on the sea, and, for the lion's share of his fishing career, he lobstered out of Nauset Inlet. A disciplined hard-worker, he was also deeply intelligent, wonderfully humorous and a lover of great music. He worked on traps in the yard to Stax/Volt soul music, NPR or David Brudnoy. Though he rose early for his day of backbreaking work, he spent the short hours of his evenings reading Plutarch's Lives, the works of Aristotle, Russian literature and historical biographies.

After fishing all day, he lent his intellect and organization to the Nauset Fishermen's Association and, later, the Outer Cape Lobstermen's Association. Both groups advocated an increase in the minimum gauge allowance for lobsters, in hopes of preserving the species by allowing more lobsters to reproduce at least once before being harvested for the dinner table.

That was lobstering. Dad hauled 400 pots alone, my brother Mike painted buoys and branded pots, I got to haul bait totes around with a gaff on occasion and my sister Nicole, and later Mike, even crewed a few days on the Atlantic. In those days, it was a given that we'd hear the NOAA weather broadcast sometime between 3- and 5 a.m. and smell the coffee percolating. There was a pretty good chance Dad would survive coming back through the inlet and we'd see him for dinner.

Before those days there was scalloping, and sometimes the shed would come alive at night with guys cutting bushels of scallops. The Ballantine flowed and kids cracked codes. Before that there was long-lining or gillnetting cod, and I was born while he was away on one of those Spring trips on the Madonna out of Chatham. He returned home with 8- or 9,000 pounds of cod and a new baby.

Back then, there were also long winter trips on draggers out of New Bedford or Fairhaven. He got on his first trip as a young engine man, armed with a book describing the engine and some cursory knowledge of how things work. Those were stressful times, although Mom didn't show it until the day he was supposed to return to port. She'd start to look a little anxious. I can remember him coming home taped-up after breaking his ribs on the ship, and that was one of the few times I can recall him laying down during the day

Crews became tight. I recall attending Arstein's wedding in Fairhaven. I also remember listening in the kitchen when Captain Tobias Vig made one of his yearly visits - his stories of seafaring told in an impossibly deep voice. He once warned me of "the power of nature", and his tone, rich with the personal knowledge of nature's wrath, has haunted me ever since.

For the anniversary of my father's death, he will be making a posthumous guest-post on my blog. His piece, 'a typical fish dragging trip' follows:

The New Bedford draggers would stay in port for three days after unloading a trip. The scallopers would stay in for five days. Usually, the fish dragging trips, seven to eight days dock to dock, were shorter than a typical scallop trip, which would entail eight to nine days scalloping, or ten days dock to dock.

If you landed Wednesday, you'd sail on Saturday. (In Boston, the style was land Wed. and sail Fri.) So the gang would have orders for gear work at 9 or 10 a.m. Saturday. While the net was being rolled off the drum and spread out for maintenance, the cook would take the grub aboard, usually delivered by a chandlery such as New Bedford Ship Supply. In some cases, ice would be delivered, crushed and shot into the hold from a truck. Or the boat would go over to the ice house for ice. Sometimes "lumpers" - dock workers who provisioned and unloaded boats for labor rates - would ice the hold. With a total complement of five or six men on a dragging trip, the expense of lumpers charged to the trip was not objectionable.

After gear work there might be a break for lunch. Typically a trip dragger would 'throw the lines' between 2 and 5 p.m. In the old union days in Boston, the draggers could not leave port if one crew member had a foot on the dock after 5 p.m.

The dragger would pass through the NB hurricane dike and transit Quick's Hole in the Elizabethan Islands thirty to forty-five minutes later, heading NE up Vineyard Sound and then E past the Vineyard toward Cross Rip in Nantucket Sound, #17 off Nantucket, and finally Great Round Shoal. Depending on the tide, the trip from NB to GRS buoy would take six to seven hours. If the crew knew the Sound, the Captain might start wheel watches at Cross Rip.

On a five to six handed dragger, the 24-hour clock was divided into three eight-hour staggered watches. For simplicity let's assume six men. A crewman would be on for eight hours and off for four. With two men off every four hours, there would always be three men 'on deck' and one Captain or mate in the wheelhouse. The Capt. and cook would always be off from 12- 4 p.m. (This way the cook would be up to set meals at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. He might leave some soup or chowder at noontime when he turned in.)  So the mate and one other would be up from 8-4; the engineer (chief) and the sixth from 12-8. With a regular crew, the mate and chief would alternate the dog-watch from trip to trip. During steaming the wheel watches were four hours, affording some sleep time.

It might take 16-20 hours to reach the Northern Edge, the Winter Fishing Ground (the Leg') or the Northeast Peak from GRS. The 650K steel doors would be hoisted over the sides, the net rolled off in the wake, idlers and backstraps connected from net to doors, and the Capt. or mate would throttle up as he released the doors from the winch drums using wheelhouse controls. (On older boats the men on deck ran the winches.)

Once the net was set the holdmen (never the cook) would go in the hold to prepare the fish pens and pass up the fish baskets, picks and fishforks. They would set up the working 'kit' of oak checkerboards that divided the deck into areas for dumping, dressing, sorting and washing fish. Then... a cuppa coffee while waiting for the first haulback - in those days 1.5- to 2-hours was the typical length of a tow, unless you hung up.

It went like this: haulback, get ahold of the cod-end knot as the bag slid across the deck and stop it off or yank like a bastard as the bag was raised up over the dumping checker. Re-tie the cod-end, roll the net back off the drum, hook the idlers off the drum to the backstraps, set her back out, sort and clean the fish and put 'em down in the hold. If all went well, this would be the routine for six, seven or eight days and nights. Then steam home to NB, timing the return to be able to go to an early morning diner for breakfast before the 8 a.m. auction at Pier 3. (Scallops had a 7 a.m. auction.) Go to the fish house that bought your trip. Lumpers would work the hold while the mate would be on dock tallying the trip. Other crew would swing baskets from the deck or catch and dump them down the chute on the dock. The cook would wash the pen boards with Simple Green as they were passed up from the hold. Finish taking out from 1 to 2 p.m, bring the boat back to its berth, clean up and go to the settlement house to pick up your check. Go home for a couple of days.

One memorable February on the Leg', Olav hauled back a giant set of cod just as I was going off watch. (I was the chief, there were five men.) He tried to bring the whole bag up the ramp as the snow blew sideways and the 4 p.m. gloaming darkened to nightfall. The bag actually got stuck in the ramp as the boat heaved and the boom buckled. Panic. Shouts. Companionway doors slamming. Hey Chief!

What to do? A NE gale was gathering and as the boat heaved the cod-end started to split open and fish began falling back into the sea. Fergus Hickey shouted, "Tie a rope on me!" as he made an attempt to crawl out to the cod-end to save the fish. Newfoundlanders like Hickey did not like to screw around, and they hated to lose money. But calmer heads prevailed and Hickey was dissuaded. We were able to get the splitting bag aboard using the port boom, and even after losing a heartbreaking amount of fish, we still put over 5,000 lbs of cod down into the hold.

We laid to for the rest of the night, while the wind blew and Olav received all kinds of free advice over the radio. When daylight broke, we all went to work - Olav, Arstein, Romeo Lamire, Hickey and me. By putting a tire down we were able to keep the deck dry enough to weld checker stanchions. By hook or by crook, we dismantled the deck kit from the starboard side and set up to use the port side. Olav was drinking plenty of coffee, and he had his doubts, but after using the portside set-up for a few watches, he declared, "This is better than it was before!"

A few nights later on the same trip, while trying to retrieve a broken idler, I got caught between the aft rail and the chain backstrap from a door. This could have been a beheading, but I came out of it with two broken ribs. We worked a few more watches. I was trying to tough it out, but Olav was watching my work deteriorate, so we headed for port (it was the seventh or eighth day, anyway.) Rather than go to the NB auction, we unloaded at Bogges' in Vineyard Haven, and I was sent home. As I took the ferry over to Woods Hole in the snow, I got a look at the Bell with 70,000 lbs of fish in her. What a vessel.

Another time, Arstein took the boat out before Good Friday. I went mate even though Arstein's father, Oddmun, owner of the Ocean Gem and the Blue Sea, was aboard, along with Kaare Ness, longtime skipper of the Shamrock and Ronny Johnson, and mate of the Angela W., swordfish skipper. We were fishing off Big Rip, about 15 miles south of George's Shoal. On my watch, Kaare came into the wheelhouse and said, "You know, on this tow you can go all the way over to 52 without any problem. You might feel her stub her toe once in a while, but you won't tear up." So this is what I did. Arstein was getting up and I was going on deck when it was time to haul back. When we dumped the bag, it yielded something on the order of 25- 30 baskets of George's flounder and yellowtails (12 baskets to 1,000 weight.) Wow. High-priced stuff! We stayed on that tow and went in after a few days - five days dock to dock. We netted around 30,000 lbs of fish, mostly flats - and over $30,000 stock. We hit big prices even though Easter had just passed. And those Captains! It was as though they were happy to be out of their wheelhouses for a little exercise! And besides all that, we never cracked a single mesh and I still got home for my wedding anniversary. Those were the days.

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First Blue Crab

          After a good month of mucking around in salt ponds, I finally found our first blue crab of the season. Let the games begin. While this big guy seemed to be going solo, I can only hope his friends are not far behind. Blue crabs can all but capture the soul of a seafood lover - and hunter.  They inspire a kind of reverence paired with obsession that usually is reserved for things like very good oysters and striped bass. Clams and blues, eat your hearts out.

          The incredible flavor of blue crab is mostly responsible for the frenzy their appearance creates among those who've learned to catch and eat them. But their striking beauty is noted by all, and their fierceness earns them great respect. You do not want to get anywhere near the claws, as the bite is not so much crushing pinch as razor slice. Plenty of blood has been shed over a fast-escaping crab, but they don't reserve their nasty strikes for such exciting moments; blue crabs will lunge at anything that moves, delivering punishment to those who don't respect their tenacity.

          To fight them is sublime; to eat them, divine. It is a familiar theme in the fishing world. And blue crabs call on the physical skill and sharp senses of the hunter. When scooping, the playing field offers sinking mud that sends clouds of debris in every direction with every step, making the already challenging task of seeing the prey through the sun's glare on choppy water that much more impossible. The scoop-net needs to be handled by a lacrosse player. Nailing the crab and quickly twisting the net to catch it inside and lift it out of its comfort zone is a move that requires practise and finesse. The crab can move lightning-fast, and it invariably moves deeper, somehow sensing that a buffoon in waders in waist deep water will not be able to follow it, even if he or she could see where it went.

          Hunting the crab with a net is less popular than the baited hand-line, which reins supreme in places like Dennis' Crab Creek. The gear is simple and cheap; a length of twine, braided line, heavy monofilament or clothesline; a hunk of bluefish or pogie or some other oily fish, or even more popularly, chicken; a long-handled crab net; and a bucket to receive the catch. One wraps the line around the bait, tying it securely, and throws it into the creek. Crabs will come and begin to tear the meat apart, at which point the line is slowly pulled in and the crab lifted to shore. It is advisable at this point to have a net, as crabs will let go when you hoist them out of the water. I was always surprised that the crab would keep holding on as it is reeled in, but their fierce territorial nature makes them fight to hang on to the best meal in the river. Double-headers are not uncommon.

          I prefer to scoop crabs. The scene in Dennis and other rivers with high crab populations is pretty crazy. There is a huge amount of poaching of undersized crabs, and my experience has been that the most egregious poaching comes at the hands of Vietnamese crabbers, who make up the majority of the crabbing population at these sites. It is possible that they can't read the posted signs that indicate the minimum allowable size, which is a 4 and 1/8 inch shell width from spine to spine. As the numbers of Vietnamese crabbers increase with every year and every cell-phone call from the river bank to the city, I think the town of Dennis should post the regs in Vietnamese at Crab Creek and Clancy's - or at least enforce the rules.

          While the numbers of crabs in Orleans and Chatham are not as impressive as those in Dennis, there are usually enough crabs for a family dinner, once they really arrive for the season. The blue crab is regarded as a migratory species, but there is debate among locals about whether some burrow into the mud in salt ponds to winter over. Wherever they are coming from, they seem to get active when the weather and water warms.

          I have ogled at what seem to be delicious recipes for blue crab, like those printed in Saveur magazine's story about crabbing in New York with a Vietnamese family. I long to try their crab spring rolls with dipping sauce or spicy crab soup, but our crabs are invariably cooked the same way, and eaten with wild abandon - often out in the yard or standing over the kitchen counter. Somehow blue crabs just do that to us. For more than a few, we fire up the propane burner and put on a big pot of water heavily flavored with Old Bay seasoning. Crabs are carefully dropped in, and when they turn red they are pulled out and pulled apart. The meat is cracked out, picked out, sucked out and even chewed out of the shell. This is a great barbarian meal.

          Our first crab made a nice snack for Grandma, and we look forward to a good season of crabbing. The formal name for blue crab is Callinectes sapidus, from the Greek calli="beautiful", nectes="swimmer", and Latin sapidus="savory". For a great read about the blue crab, try Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner.

          p.s - While I hunt around for crabs, I am continually amazed by the quality of Orleans' oysters. These 'selects' can get really huge!

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Gettin fishy without getting wet

There are plenty of fish around, but I'm not catching. My favorite honey holes have been suspiciously barren of the normally ubiqitous 22- to 25- inch almost-keeper striped bass that make me pine for a slot-fish system like the one in Maine, which allows anglers to keep fish from 20 to 26 inches and those bigguns over 40. There have been some small schoolies taken in some of the regular spots, while other tried and true schoolie spots have remained totally fishless. At the same time, Cape Cod Bay has been hot with keepers, the Canal is cooking and the Sound has yielded some nice big fish. The tip of Nauset inlet is already closed off for piping plovers or some such thing, which is depressing as the big schools have not yet arrived. P-Town has had some large fish, and the blues are already getting hooked from the beach as near as Harwich. The appearance of bluefish casts a pall over my squid-fishing fantasies, which, at present, remain one part imagination and one part reminiscence (and another part sheer frustration.)

I promised myself I wouldn't go nutty for surf-fishing until the baby was at least 3...or maybe 5. I just can't juggle living according to the diaper change clock while I'm living and breathing the tide chart and the moon phase and the fish reports and the wind and the bait situation. If you have been caught by the beach fishing bug, you know what I mean. I swore I would completely abandon the hunt for bass, but that declaration may have been a castle made of sand.

We'll see what happens, but I don't think nights on the beach are in my near future. I have made a few casts, and the tell-tale thunk I wished for came from the baby grabbing the butt of my rod from his roost in the backpack. He has a great sense of humor. He likes hikes; he just likes it when he's doing the hiking. He loves the water; he just loves being in the water. As best I can figure, I have about 3 casts at any one location, which is a pretty good technique, as long as there are fish in a few of those spots. I haven't had that pleasure.

My idea for doing a little spring-run fishing (no pressure, just for yucks) was to hike Nauset's Outer Beach with the baby in the pack and cast around for stripers. Unfortunately, the surf-fishing season is a little delayed, maybe by a few weeks. And the baby is hip to the beach and wants his feet in the sand, not dangling out of a pack. We fished the turn of the tide at the inlet recently, and he was keen to reel in the lure. I sat on the sand and made myself  into a fighting chair, holding the rod as he reeled. He is very strong and surprisingly adept at handling a reel - an old pro at 20 months with an honest pin-worthy white perch on his record as the first fish he's reeled in on his own, with rod-holding assistant, of course.

It's been pretty hard to cry about not fishing much because A - that's not what I signed up for when I got in line for an angelic infant and B - my kitchen has been completely overrun with fish. There has been a flurry of fluke and a bounty of bass, with local oysters to boot and the periodic appearance of squid in the sink. The fluke were...um...a fluke - a gift from an offshore gillnetter. And the bass represented a small fraction of those caught by the big guy. I harvested big, salty oysters in Orleans (who knew?) and we had a taste-off with some Wellfleets brought around by Evan Brunige. The Orleans batch averaged larger than the 'Fleets and had a more tan-colored meat than the gray Wellfleets. The Wellfleet oysters had more of a briny taste, but the Orleans group was rated as more flavorful (What?!!?)

The menu went from fluke tacos to bass tacos; from pan-roasted fluke with brown butter and capers to fish chowder with bass. There were some deep-fry experiments involving a tip from a fisherman and a box of Colonel so-and-so's yummy MSG coating, but I kept to the milk and flour pan-fried filets with thyme and was quite happy.

So far, the chowder is the winner. I manage a pretty good collection of seafood cookbooks, but Gillian Drake's Cape Cod Seafood Cookbook almost always wins out when I'm trying to find a good recipe for any salty fish or clam. And that is not just because a photo of my love with a giant bass graces one of the pages. Instead, it is because she mixes classic Cape Cod seafood dishes with more labor-intensive 'gourmet'  recipes, many of which come from local restaurants. I keep Jasper White's Summer Shack Cookbook very close at hand, too. I am dying to cook his Portuguese Fisherman's Stew with bluefish, bass, squid and chorizo.

Here is the recipe for our most popular dish of the week, with my wish for you to catch a small keeper and try it out. Tight lines. (If you can't catch a keeper, bug a fisherman friend for one or make the chowder with haddock...or you can wait until commercial striper season opens on the Cape sometime around July 12.)

Cape Cod Fish Chowder, adapted from Gillian Drake's Cape Cod Fish and Seafood Cookbook, available at Nauset Fish Market, Route 6A in Orleans, Mass.

• 1 1/2 lbs of fresh striped bass, red meat excised and cut into 1-inch pieces
• 1/2 lb bacon
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 potatoes, diced
• 2 bay leaves
• water to cover
• 2 Tbs flour
• 1 cup milk
• 1/2 cup cream
• 2 oz butter
• paprika, salt and pepper

In a large, heavy-bottomed pot, cook the bacon to render the fat and remove to drain on paper. Pour off excess fat, if desired, to leave about 4 Tbs of fat remaining. Saute the onions until golden. Add the potatoes and bay leaves and add enough water to cover. Simmer until the potatoes are tender, around 20 minutes.

Mix the flour with the milk and stir until no lumps are present. Add to the chowder and stir gently. Add the fish and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the cream and heat through, being careful not to boil.

Stir in the butter, a pinch or two or paprika and salt and pepper to taste. Let rest for about 10 minutes for the flavors to meld. Serve with the bacon, crumbled, or make BLT's for a side dish. This chowder tastes even better the next day.

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Calamari time

          The squid are... around. I can't report that these mysterious inky creatures are coursing in great numbers through the Cape's Nantucket Sound-side estuaries, eagerly visiting traditional spawning grounds, and hungrily hitting bright-colored Yo-zuri jigs dropped from bridges and docks around Chatham and Harwich and even Hyannis. With any luck, those days will come, and soon. For now, there are weir-caught delicacies available to folks with a link to a trap-boat.

          Sometimes seafood can have sort-of funny sources. I've long been a curious admirer of  Bait Eaters, folks who will fry up American Eels garnered from enterpreneurial fishermen who trap the black beauties to sell as striper bait. I've heard tales of a fruitless fisherman bringing home his bags of sand eels and putting the cast-iron pan to work making the slim, silvery bait into a meal. While I haven't yet been reduced to eating bait, I have intentionally cast my net for small and undervalued seafood. Last week I went looking for blue crabs and happened upon some kind of migration of 'other crabs.' In a few minutes I had 25 maybe-Jonah-crabs, who quickly found themselves in a big pot of water seasoned with Old Bay. Though the flesh was a little more stringy than the treasured blue crab meat, the flavor was excellent. A few days later, we boiled spider crabs, and they were even less delicious, but still 'crabby' and acceptable.

          Our first batch of calamari came from a chance meeting with a young gill-netter who was bait-fishing for striped bass at a bay-side beach. His six-year-old son proudly showed off his considerable skill at casting - and his father's whole squid, the bait of choice for the day's fishing. After chatting it was revealed that the squid came from my childhood neighbor's weirs on the Sound, and that they had come in just the day before, and that they had been well-refrigerated since. With a blue-eyed, suntanned smile, the fisherman reached into his cooler and gave us lunch. And, thus, I became a bait eater.

          My jigs are ready. I have my eye on the tides, the moon, and the Southeast wind, as my mind replays images of spinning, ink-spurting, color-changing squid flying out of the water and over the rails of the bridge. Will the Vietnamese still be there, calling in reports on their cellphones while huddling close to the anglers hot on the squid? I don't know. I also don't know if I'll be there. While I have a pretty hot lead on where to get some really fresh squid, there is absolutely nothing like pulling them in yourself. You haven't eaten calamari until you've been properly inked.

          To be very good, squid must be very fresh. As such, it will be hard to make excellent calamari with squid purchased from a fish market, unless you can be assured that they were caught no more than one day before the time of purchase. If you are lucky enough to find fresh squid, you will most likely have to clean them. Briefly, this is how:

          Cut the tentacles off just above where they attach, under the eyes. Squeeze out the beak from the base of the tentacles and discard. Place the tentacles in your bowl of parts you will keep. Cut the 'head' away from the long body and discard. Run the back of your knife from the pointy tip of the squid's body to the open end where the head once was, forcing the guts out. If there are any remaining guts, scoop them out with a finger. Feel around the open end of the squid's body for the quill. It is a stiff, translucent thing in the soft, opaque body. Grasp the tip of the quill and pull it out. Run the back of the knife along the body to remove the skin. Peel the skin off the squid's wings. Do not try to skin the tentacles. Rinse the squid bodies and tentacles well, and head inside to prepare the catch.

Calamari

• Fresh Squid
• Enough milk to cover
• Enough flour to coat
• Fresh ground black pepper
• Enough oil to fry
• Newspaper
• Fresh cocktail sauce

Cut the tentacle sections in half. Remove the two long tentacles if desired. Cut the body sections into 1/2 inch rings. Place the squid in a bowl and cover with milk. Let soak for at least 15 minutes.

Heat frying oil in a wok. Pour flour onto a plate and mix with fresh ground pepper. Dredge squid in the flour until well-coated, banging off the excess. Carefully ladle squid into hot oil and cook for about 5 minutes. Squid should be soft but not squishy to taste, and the coating should be lightly browned. Transfer batches to newspaper to drain, then serve with cocktail sauce.

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Beds, buds and brews

          In beds amended with manure, compost and wood ash, I am planting some proven specimens, like these...

          I'm hoping for a rapid spread, followed by a heavy harvest of robust, sticky buds, like these...

           After drying, I'll vacuum seal the reward, leaving a few ounces aside so I can get some of this going ...

          And, finally, we'll enjoy some local homebrew, most likely an ale, like this....

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