Easy Day!(took my mom and oma on the boat)

Today, we were going to only be doing single traps. I love single traps because i have a system for getting everything done every trap.  I do the traps bait first, then I band the lobsters, last I fill the bait bag from the last trap and put a rock fish on it. It is a really efficient process so that it gets done as fast as possible. It was foggy early in the morning, but as the day went on, it got really nice, and sunny!

We were going to take my mom, my Oma, and my brother Levi, on the lobster boat later today, so that they could see me haul 10 traps. Levi wanted to band the lobsters and "send them to jail" as he calls it as he sends them down the shoot to the lobster box. We were finished with our original traps at about 12:30 P.M. but then we hauled some traps that only had 4 nights on them because we had more time because we were going to pick up them at 2 P.M. to go on the boat. Those traps were filled with lobster and he is glad that we hauled them.

We had some traps up near a really small island, and Uncle Art said it was up in the rocks where the big lobsters lived. He said that the big lobsters like to live up in the rocks near the island because they are separated from the smaller lobsters. He had some traps there, and it was only like 10-20 Feet deep. We hauled them, and we got really good sized lobsters from those traps. We got about 3 really good sized lobsters that were really big and to big to keep.

My Uncle Arts mom named Lucy, has a lobster on the wall and it is 20 LBS. It is mounted on her wall and i got a picture of it!

HUGE 20 LB LOBSTER!

-August 25, Tuesday

Double Traps Day! (got a HUGE lobster!)

Today, we were going to go off shore to haul the double traps that we have about 3 miles away from shore. Since it takes about 25-30 minutes to get there, i have tome to fill a lot of bait bags so that i can have extra if i need them. I had cereal again for breakfast today. It was the cinnamon one. We got out on the boat, and we did some double traps first, but it was really foggy at the time. After we did some double traps, Uncle Art decided that we would just do single traps until the fog cleared up. He has about 30 single traps out there, and the rest are double traps. The traps need to be double traps so that when the whales are migrating, they don't get choked with the ropes, because the double trap makes it so the whales can get by.


Throughout the day, it was foggy one second, and then i turn around from filling up a few bait bags, and you can see 3 miles and all directions. Then, 3 traps later, you cant see your next buoy. It was crazy! It was like fog waves were just rolling over us and it was foggy, then not foggy every 30 minutes. In one of the double traps, we found a HUE lobster, and Uncle Art got a picture of me with it! He said that if i got clawed by that one, it could REALLY hurt me!

Huge lobster!

We found some more fish inside of our traps. There was a fish that was in our trap, and Uncle Art said that he would fill up with air in his stomach. He was like a puffer fish, but only his stomach inflated not his whole body.

We thought that we would be out on the boat until 3 P.M. but we got done at about 1:30 P.M. Uncle Art said that i was doing a really good job working. I want to come back next year!


-August 24, Monday

Day Off! (Sunday - Went to look at houses)

Today was Sunday, so we could not haul today. I would be going home in about 8 days. Today, my Grandma, and my Dad, flew back home to Michigan. I got up at about 7:30 A.M. to say goodbye to them before they left at 8 A.M. After they left, i read a chapter of my book, the scarlet letter, that i have to read for school. Then, me, my brother, Aunt Pennie, my mom, and my Oma, all got into the car to go and check out houses that my mom might buy in Maine.

My mom wants to buy a house in maine so that when we come back out here in the summers for me to work, we can have our own house, and so that my Oma can use it whenever she wants. We looked at 3 houses, and i liked the 2nd one the best, because the whole house was really open, and unique. There were not really any rooms, you could see everything in the house, and there were no walls, so everything was just open, and it was awesome! The people who had lived there before, had some really unique pieces of art that looked really strange and irreplaceable!

We had lunch at a place called the "Happy Clam" They had some really good seafood meals, and really good soups. I got a cheeseburger, and some onion rings. The onion rings were huge and really good! There was a playground at the "Happy Clam" It had a swing-set, and it had a huge game of Jenga!

Giant Jenga!

By the playground, they also had a toy car that little kids could ride around in, and it actually has an electric battery and it goes by itself, so you don't need to move it, and Levi loved driving in that!

Levi riding in the car!

They had a chair, that was somehow, made out of a lobster trap. They made it like a real chair with a back, and arm rests, and it has the net inside of it and it looks really cool!

After we were done looking at the houses, we got back to the house, and i read more chapters of my book, and then, me and Levi were going to go and put some more coins on the rail-road track so that they would get flattened!


-August 23, Sunday

Rainy Day (lobsters dropped off)

Today, I got up, and i had a boal of cereal for breakfast. It was cinnamon, and it was really good! I packed some peanut-butter crackers and a water bottle into my plastic bag for a snack on the boat. We went out at about 5:15 A.M. from the boat, to go to the wharf. It was not foggy like usual. When we got onto the boat, it started to rain a little bit, and so we had to put on our raincoats. From then and on, the rain went on and off, and it wasn't cool, because i had to keep my head looking down, or else i would get a ton of rain in my face.

Soon, the rain went a way for a while, and i got to take my rain jacket off. We only hauled single traps today, but sometimes, if the traps were close together, Uncle Art would give a trap to me for me to do, so that he could get the other trap for him to do. The lobsters were dropping off today, and at the end of the day, we didn't even fill the box all the way to the top. It started to rain again soon, and i put my rain jacket back on.


We got done at about 1 P.M. and my Grandma, Dad, and brother Levi, were going to take a short trip with me and Uncle Art on the boat so they could see what it was actually like to haul a trap. We left 5 traps for that trip so that they could see us haul the 5 traps. Levi wanted to band the lobsters, but he wanted someone else to hold them while he put the rubber band on them. Uncle Art has a gate around his propeller so he does not get rope tangled and it looks like this.

This cage keeps the trap ropes out of the propeller so that they don't get tangled in it.

We got back to the wharf at 1, and we unloaded our lobsters, and we had about 500 pounds. We usually get more than that, but today, they dropped off. Uncle Art left me in charge of the boat at the wharf, while he went over to the Lobstah Shack nextdoor, to get some cheeseburgers for me and him for lunch. By the time he got back, Grandma, My brother Levi, and my Dad, were ready, and were getting on the boat. We all got onto the boat, to go for a mini haul session.

On the way out, i had my cheeseburger with some potato chips, and we talked about the boat, and what happens when we haul a trap. We showed them the bait box and where the lobsters go. We were going to haul 5 traps where it was very rocky, and usually that is where the big lobsters are. We hauled the traps, and we got about 8 good sized lobsters from each trap. Those traps did great! Levi got to band some lobsters.

On one of those traps, there were some sea-urchins in there. They were green, and they are really sharp, and my Dad, and Grandma got to check them out. We also, got about 40 conch shells from just that trap alone. It was so crazy, i got all of them out of the trap, and put them on the side of the boat to take a picture, then i threw them all back into the ocean.

When we got back to the wharf, we put the boat back, and then a fish, just jumped out of the water, onto the floating wooden raft. It was so crazy, because no one had ever seen that before. Then everyone got off, and i went back to my moms house with my dad, Grandma, and Levi.

-August 22, Saturday

Learn how to Cook a Lobster

Today, i will be teaching how to cook a lobster! One thing that people do not usually understand is that, lobsters are not red until AFTER they are cooked. Before lobsters are cooked, they are dark with dots on them. This is a picture of a lobster before, and after it was cooked.

The first thing that you need, is a big lobster pot, big enough to hold and cook the lobsters. It can cook a  lot of lobsters at a time. The first thing that you do, is you fill the big pot with water, and then you heat it up until it starts to boil. When the boil is going, you put the lobsters in the pot. Then, since you just put the lobsters in the pot, the boil will go away until the 2nd boil starts going. This is when you start your timer. For soft shelled lobster, it takes about 14  minutes from the 2nd boil, for them to be cooked, and for hard shell lobsters, it takes about 22 minutes.

This is Uncle Art, with the lobster pot boiling, hooked up to a propane tank.

This is what the inside of the lobster pot looks like. 

 When the time is done, you take the lobsters, and take them out of the pot, with some tongs, and you put them on a plate, or if you want, you can put some lobsters into a giant strainer pot, and you can make lobster pieces, instead of having the whole lobsters out. We had about 7 whole lobsters out, and we made the rest into bits of pieces.

Uncle Art taking the lobsters out of the pot

Put them on a plate, or in the other pot with holes in it.

After you are done with that, you can let the lobsters cool off, and then you can just take them inside, and then you can eat them. You need to know how to get the meat out of the lobster, because most people do not eat the shell. For the claws, there are these things that you can use to crack the shell of the claws, and get the meat from the inside of the claws.

Cracks the claws open to get the meat inside.

For the body of the lobster, you bend the tail flippers back so they all break off, and then you can push your finger along the inside top of the lobsters shell, so that the meat falls out. Then, we have butter sauce that you can dip the meat into. The meat, is usually not as big as the claw itself, because the lobsters need to shed their old shell and get a new one in order to grow. This is a picture of the actual claw of a lobster, and the meat inside of it.

The left is the meat, and the right, is the actual claw, so they are different sizes.

Then, you can just enjoy your lobsters!

Lobsters set out on a plate in the middle of the table.

-August 21, Friday (blog of the day later today)

Crab day! (very foggy)

Yesterday, my whole family went out to eat for Aunt Pennies birthday! We went to a really fancy reastruant, and it was an italian place. I got the bacon and bleu cheese pizza. It was really good, but i could not eat the whole thing, so i had to take it home.

Bacon and Bleu cheese pizza.

Today, i got up at 5 again, and there were no more bagels, so i had 2 pieces of toast, one with jam, and one with peanut-butter. I packed my bag of snacks with pretzels, a water bottle, and a bag of chips. Today we thought we were going to be done after 1 P.M. but we actually finished right after Noon! We were collecting the good sized crabs that we caught in our lobster traps today, because later, my dad wanted to boil the crabs and eat them. 

When we went out on the boat this morning, there was a lot of bait bags filled up already, and Uncle Art had just bought a whole other package of yellow bags. The bags come in long rectangles, so you need to stretch them out before you can fill them with bait. I got a lot of bags filled on the way out to the first trap. I finished filling all of the yellow bags with the rest of the bait we had in the bait box, by about 12:30 P.M. So... from then and on, i didn't need to fill bait bags because they were all full and all of the bait was gone.

We saw a mama seal, and a baby seal, following our boat. At first, we thought that it was just the baby seal alone, but then we saw the big mama seal, and Uncle Art said it was rare that we got to see them together. The baby seal was really tame, and it came right up to the boat. It was so cute, i was able to get a picture of it!

Baby seal!

Baby seal again!

It was right next to the boat, so i was able to get this picture by leaning out over the boat and taking this picture. It was awesome! By the end of the day, we had collected about 9 good sized crabs, for my dad to cook. Crabs are really strong, and their pinch, can hurt as much as a large sized lobster! Crabs are only about the size of your foot, but not as long. We got some good sized crabs, and heavy ones, good for cooking!

-August 20, Thursday (Day off tomarrow!)

Foggy Easy day! (done at Noon)

Today, it was really foggy. I got up at 5 A.M. and we got to the wharf at about 5:30 A.M. It was pretty foggy when we got to the wharf. We went straight to the lobster-boat from the docks because we already had bait, so we didnt need to get any this morning. We were only doing single traps today, and i filled a lot of bait bags on the way out. As we were hauling traps, i tried to fill more bait bags than we were putting in the traps, so that i could have some for tomorrows work.

Today was easy because we were not using any rock-fish, so i only needed bait bags to fill. This made it much easier. The only reason that we weren't using rock fish today was because, we didn't have any left, because the wharf ran out, and we got the last 9 packages of rock fish yesterday, and they were all used up by the end of yesterday.

We caught a huge female lobster, and it had shell disease. Shell disease is caused by pollution in the water, and the only way a lobster can get rid of shell disease, is if the lobster sheds its old shell, before the lobster dies. The lobster was huge, and its tail was really big also.

Ill be posting a Learner page on how to cook lobsters tomarrow.

-August 19, Wednesday.