Union Fair! - Sunfish

August 16:

Today we hauled our pairs again. We had around 70 pairs to haul I think, we had 621 pounds at the end of the day which is pretty good.

August 17:

We were back to our single traps on Saturday. We were hauling inside in the harbor. We saw a fin out of the water and saw that it was a sunfish. We see them every so often when we are out on the boat, they are funny looking. Just seeing the fin looks like it could be a shark but the sunfish actually looks like this:

 

August 18:

Today I had a day off and I woke up around 11 AM since I stayed up late the night before. We decided to go to the Union fair which is an agricultural fair. I drove Uncle Art & Aunt Pennie there and it was about 15 miles away. Once we got there we were able to see a lot of different animals like pigs.



We also got to see a lot of birds such as chickens, hens and ducks. We saw some really big birds there. 



I had a corndog at the fair and Aunt Pennie & I also got root-beer floats. We went on the ferris wheel and went through the Moxie museum. 




The final thing we saw at the Union fair was an event where 12 kids between ages 7-8 were put in the same place where they let 10 pigs run around and the kids had to try to catch the pig in a bag and if they got the pig they could keep the pig or auction it off. It was very fun to watch, i'd never seen anything like it. 

Best Day Yet! - Hauling 200 Traps

August 4:

Today was Sunday so I had a day off. I went up with Aunt Pennie, Oma and Levi to Guilford Butler School to film a video of the inside of it. It got closed but we want to use the building as a library so I recorded the inside and i'm going to make a video of it so people can see how nice it looks inside and how it could make a good new library location. 

August 5:

We were back out on the boat today. It was going to be a longer day as we had to set a ton of traps in the morning. When we got to the wharf, we put about 36 traps on the back of the boat. It was a ton of traps but Uncle Art managed to fit all of them on there, it was fully packed. We set a few singles to start off then set about 30 of them as pairs. After that we had a lot of pairs to haul. We started out good and kept going. It was a really good day, we got a ton of traps with over 9 lobsters in them. Our best trap of the day had about 13 lobsters in it, and in a pair we got 18 lobsters! 

The first day we went out to haul in July, we got 500 pounds and we ended up with more than that today, 689 pounds! Almost 700 pounds, we were very excited and hopefully the lobsters continue to thrive out where our pairs are set. Im glad we got the pairs hauled because that means that the rest of the week will be a bit easier because we haul singles. Hauling pairs is always an increase in tempo as every time we haul a buoy there are 2 traps on the boat instead of one, so I have to get the lobsters out of my trap and bait it. We do go through traps faster though because its a 2 for 1 buoy deal. Its more rushed because I have to fill 2 bait bags in-between each pair when normally I just have to fill one bag since we have one trap per buoy. Tomorrow will probably be a shorter day than today, which was a 2 PM day. 

August 6:

Today we were back to hauling singles. It was another nice day and we did about 2 pounds per trap and ended up with 315 pounds which was worse than yesterday but we were expecting that.

August 7:

Today we did a bit worse. We were into the wharf by noon, it was a very foggy day. It was hard to see where we were. At one point the fog lifted for a bit but then it came right back. We ended up with about 210 pounds which is pretty bad. 

August 10:

I had August 9-10 as days off, but we went back out for a very long day today. We were hauling the same traps we did Monday which was all of our pairs. We ended up hauling 200 traps in total today which is the first time Uncle Art and I have ever hauled that many traps in a single day, and we got 581 pounds, which is a drop off from when we hauled like 150 traps and got 690 pounds but still not horrible.

Lobster Fest + Shortest Day on Saturday!

July 31:

Today I had a day off, and we went to the lobster festival in Rockland. It cost only $ 1 to get in. I had a sausage to eat and we walked around and saw the Maine stage and the tons of stands selling carnival food. Uncle Art got some ice cream and Levi and my Mom went on a turning ride.

August 1:

Today it was a nice day like it has been out on the boat. We were getting not a lot of lobster and had a lot of traps with no lobsters in them. We ended up with 230 pounds at the end of the day for a normal day which isn't the best. 

August 2:

Today we did better than we did yesterday, we had a normal day and got 327 pounds. Probably about 2 pounds to the trap which is about normal. For dinner, Levi and I roasted hot dogs over the fire we had outside. I made two, they were very good. 

August 3:

Today Uncle Art said it would be the shortest day we would have so far. He said that we would be in by Noon today. We had baited up the day before after we got into the wharf so we went right out on the boat after loading about 10 traps on the back of it. We hauled all singles today and we were doing better than we had been the past couple of days. We hauled probably 105 traps in less than 4 hours and we were in the wharf by 10 AM! It was a very short day, but we got about 3 pounds per trap which is very good compared to what we had been doing. The last 5 traps we hauled were in a very good place and we got about 36 lobsters out of just those 5! That's like 45 pounds for 5 traps which is insane. We ended up with 337 pounds with just over 100 traps hauled which is very good for us considering how short the day was and we only hauled 100 traps and some of them were only 4 nights set. Hopefully this trend continues so we can get more lobster.