Aug. 31, 1897.] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
143 
almost before I was aware of it Muskoka wharf was in 
sight, and Muskoka hfe the memory of a dream. 
J. Edw. Maybee. 
LOBSTER FISHING. 
On the shore of Massachusetts Bay, in a little place 
eight or ten miles south of P., is a little settlement, the 
chief support of ^Meh. is farming and lobster fishing. As 
you sit down to aTobster salad or broiled link, do you ever 
think of the work, and the people who work that we may 
enjoy these dishes? 
Let us look the thing over a little. In the place of 
which I speak, nearly every man, young and old, is 
engaged in this business some part of the year. Now, 
what about this fellow called a lobster, and where is he? ' 
In cold weather he goes into deep water to keep warm, 
and in the spring, as the weather and water become 
warm, he crawls inshore again to breed, and also to find a 
place to shed his shell. Do you know what I mean bv 
this? ^ 
Well, a lohster begins life on his own account with a 
shell that is one or two sizes too large for him. In the 
course of time he grows to fill it, and then looks about for 
a ^lace to cast it off. Before he gets ready to make the 
shift, there is a soft skin which forms under the shell; this 
hardens after the old shell is cast off and becomes the new 
shell. When he is in this condition, he is worthless ex- 
cept for bait, and is called a "black skin" or "shedder." 
When he sheds, the old shell cracks down the back and 
he manages to crawl out. He is now a soft, flabby fellow, 
and must hide himself somewhere out of reach of his 
enemies; for while he will live on them when his shell is 
hard, he, as a shedder, is a prey to every fish that swims. 
After his shell gets hard, he then comes out looking for 
food. As you will see, the best time to catch him is when 
his shell is full, or just before he becomes a shedder, Now 
let's see how he is caught. 
In the early spring the traps or pots must be put into 
condition. A pot is made with an oak frame about 4ft. 
long and 2ft. wide, with slats nailed lengthwise, forming 
the bottom. Then there are four bows bent from one side 
over to the other, with slats nailed the same as on the bot- 
tom. 
It now looks like a chfckencoop without ends. W e now 
take a small, wooden hoop about Sin. in diameter and 
knit a coarse net around it until we get to the rim of the 
trap. These are tied to the rim and then the hoop is 
fastened inside, one at each end. Now make a door in the 
top and you have a lobster pot ready for line and buoy. 
The line is about 100ft. of the common clothesline, and the 
buoy is a piece of wood shaped and painted to suit the 
fancy of the fisherman. 
After a man has selected certain colors for his buoys he 
is known by these colors; or, as they say, "paint." Should 
you ask one of the fishermen who owns a trap, the buoy 
of which you hold in your hand, he will answer: "That is 
Wen's paint," or whoever owns the trap. He knows the 
colors at a glance. 
After fastening in the hook on which the bait is placed, 
the pot is ready for sea. A lohster crawls up on the net in 
the end, goes through the hole after the bait, and drops 
down inside the trap. He does not know enough to go 
out the same way, so there he is- 
As everything is ready to set the traps, let's get our bait 
and go out. W e put six or eight pots on our 1.5ft. dory and 
take a bushel of bait— but let me tell you what the bait is: 
Fish of any kind is good, and to be first-class it must be 
"stale"; and the staler it is, the better the bait. Our friend 
the lobster is not particular what he eats. 
Uncle G. says the best catch he ever made in one pot he 
got with a dead hen on as bait. The most common bait 
is herring and sculpin, while hake, skate and dogfish work 
very well. These they cut into pieces weighing about 
21bs., and then set them in the sun to ripen. As the fish- 
ermen say, this gives them a good land flavor. It is well 
for us who like lobsters that they do not get the same 
flavor. 
But we will get back to our dory, and should the water 
he rough we find that it requires all our skill to handle 
her. 1 found this out to my so;tow when I tried it at one 
time. After we have gotten out from the shore about half 
a mile we put some bait on the pots and throw one over. 
We go about SOyds. further along shore and put over 
another, and so on until we have put out sixty or more. 
The next man goes outside and makes another line, or 
"strmg," as they call them. We must now catch bait for 
the fishing to-morrow, and on the "low water" get the 
"cars" out, into which to put the lobsters which we expect 
to catch. These are anchored close inshore, in some 
sheltered spot, by a strong chain and rope. We are now 
fixed, and in the morning we will go out and "haul." 
At about 4 o'clock in the morning Wen is on hand. 
Taking a seat in the dory we watch the ease and skill 
with which he "pushes" us out to the first buoy. I say 
"push," for these fishermen stand in the boat facing the 
bow and push the boat along with the oars instead of row- 
ing her. We reach the first buoy and Wen takes it with 
the hoat hook. Putting on his "oilers" and a pair of thick 
woolen mittens to keep the line from slipping through his 
hands, he begins to pull. You cast your eye over the side 
and try to see what he "has on the string." 
Soon you see the pot coming out of the depths with sea- 
weed and kelp clinging to it, but before you have had time 
to look he has it at the side of the boat. With a quick 
pull, which takes practice to get, he has the pot on the 
rail, and inside you see a variety of "game." There may 
be lobsters of different sizes, crabs, sculpin, cod and per- 
haps other kinds of fish; and then again, it may be as bare 
of everything as a billiard ball; but this is "tough luck," so 
we will have a catch on this trip. 
Lobsters of various sizes, and as the fish go into the bait 
tub and the crabs go overboard, we will confine ourselves 
to the lobsters. In one corner of the pot is a large dark 
green fellow trying to back out through the slats, but the 
door is opened and he is seized by the back and placed care- 
fully in the boat. He is a counter. There are two and per- 
haps three of these; the rest are "snappers," or "shorts," 
as they are called. 
To explain what I mean by "counter" and "snapper." 
The law in Massachusetts is that any one catching or hav- 
ing in his possession a lobster under lOiin. in leng+h is 
liable to a fine of S5 for such lobster. They are measured 
from the end of their beak to the end of the tail. If 
they are over the lequire^i length, or even the exact 
length, they are called "counts"; if under, they are "shorts" 
or "snappers." One trick of this trade is to get a snapper 
that will almost go and then stretch him. Talk about 
"leg p&Uing," it isn't in it to what some of the lobsters get. 
We have an egg-bearing lobster in one pot. This must 
go overboard, for the law protects these as well. In my 
opinion, these laws are right, but of course they are hard 
on the fishermen. 
We have a measure stick in the boat, and the catch is 
measured— if they are long enough they go into the boat; 
if not, they go overboard. We have taken the lobsters 
from the pot, put new bait on the hook, and now we throw 
her over. This we repeat at each pot, and find that our 
catch is sixty count. We get in shore to the car as fast as 
possible, and put them in; there they stay until the smack 
comes for them. 
You may not know what I mean by this kind of a 
smack. She is a small schooner, with what in other ves- 
sels is called the hold fitted watertight on the inside, and 
then the bottom is made Ml of holes to admit the sea 
water, and really makes a large floating car with sails. 
The place where the lobsters are carried is called the "well." 
The smack goes along shore, picking up the lobsters from 
the fishermen, and pays for them at the rate agrefd upon 
in the spring. She has a regular time and route, and often 
acts as express messenger for the boys. 
Tlie smack which goes to the place of which I write is 
the Evelyn Adams, of Boston, and I have spent some pleas- 
ant hours with her captain and crew. When she is sighted, 
the lobster men get their nets, and there is a grand hustle 
to put the catch aboard. The dories flock out to her with 
their loads, and the men joke each other about their catch. 
The lobsters are counted as they go into the well, and after 
a dory is unloaded, the man takes his money and sits 
down to a little smoke. To start a "jolly" he sings out: 
"Say, Tom, how do you like fishing my pots?" "What 
the blazes do you suppose I want to fish your traps 
for? I can get fish enough in my own." "Well, I 
notice I get more when I get out earlier than you do" 
— but here_ comes a boat with an extra large lot. 
Then there is a lot of whispering among them, and you 
hear: "That's where they go," "I'll move my string in the 
morning," "Strange how he can catch them and we can't." 
A TYEICAI. LOBSTER FISHERMAN. 
Taking their case, ,iug, box, or whatever it comes in, they 
go over the side into their dory and home. This is the 
work of these men, and it is work, I can assure you; but 
they become accustomed to it, and manage to keep nice 
farms besides. The fishing begins in March and continues 
until June; then the traps are taken ashore until August, 
to dry and be repaired. 
July is the month our friend takes to cast off the shell 
that has stood by him for a year, and the fishermen give 
him a chance. By Aug. 1 he has got into his new shell 
and got acquainted with himself, as we might say; and now 
the fishermen get after him and keep it up until Novem- 
ber, or until he goes off into deep water for the winter. 
Such is the lobster fishing in Massachusetts, and it is the 
same everywhere along our coast, with the exception of 
the season of fishing. 
In some places they go after our friend in his winter 
qiiarters, and in this "way we have them in the winter. 
We get the most of our lobsters in the winter from 
Maine and the Provinces, and the fishing there at this 
season of the year must be something that you could not 
call fun. 
Our fishermen say that it is hard work to clear $600 a year 
lobster fishing. Not very big pay for such hard work, is 
it? And these are the things of which we do not think 
when we order one on the shell. While at the beach I 
have had some traps for my own use and have taken 
pleasure in the work of running them. One day a friend, 
not having seen a lobster caught, went out with me. I 
pulled the traps and threw the lobsters into the boat. 
They were crawling around her feet and, in fact, were all 
over the boat. She stood it for a time and then said: 
"Say, can't we drive these things up into the front of the 
boat?" After we got them fixed she took one in her hand, 
and after looking at him for some time said: "What kind 
of an opinion do you suppose the man had of himself who 
first tackled a lobster?" Do you blame her? He surely 
looks the least like something eatable of anything I know. 
I learned one thing during my fishing, and that is that 
to be a success as a lobsterman one must be able to get out 
early in the morning "to hear the birds sing," as the fisher- 
men 8ay._ There is more or le.ss of the "early bird," etc., 
about this fishing, and in this case it is not worms but 
lobsters which are caught. As a rule, the fishermen re- 
spect the "paint" of one another, but there is quite a 
temptation to pull them all, and I am sorry to say "some 
go down." 
I think at one time I had the pleasure of taking out two 
of the most sleepy passengers that ever fell to any one's 
lot. I had been asked to call them early, and so at about 
4 o'clock I gave their door a gentle rap. Talk about the 
seven sleepers, I will back these two against anyone in 
this line. They came to the conclusion after awhile that 
some one was calling them, and I can hear the answers to 
my calls now. They saw lobsters caught and "heard the 
birds sing," however, and I guess they saw the sun rise for 
the first time and I fear the last, if they depend on being 
called by anything short of an earthquake. I was repaid, 
however, when I listened to the sweet strains of Mandalay 
and tried to convince Miss B. that the boat would not be 
upset. 
The fisherman works every day in the week, resting 
Sunday, and goes out sometimes when you and I would 
think that we had no use for lobsters. They are a tough, 
hardy set, and as a rule good fellows. Uncle G. has been 
in the business forty years and some of the stories he tells 
are good ones. I may at some time tell of a fishing trip 
taken with him to his trawl, but enough, do I hear you 
say? F. C. Woodwaed. 
SHEEP AND SNOWSHOES.— IX. 
A Winter Hunt on the Summit of the Rockies. 
When it comes to reading a hunting story, most men 
like to hear about a little hunting now and then, so prob- 
ably it will not be of interest to go on telling what we 
talked about in camp on days when we could not hunt. 
Yet from the continued story telling of our lodge, one 
may get a very good notion of what he himself must ex- 
pect if he ever starts out to go hunting in the Rockies in 
the winter. It is very much a case of the fortune of 
weather. If it storms, he cannot hunt; and it usually 
does storm. 
We lay about camp two days more, March 17 and 18, 
eating and telling stories. John Monroe and his woman 
came up from their camp below, and we had an addition 
to our staff of raconteurs. From John I learned some- 
thing about trapping otters and beavers with bait in the 
winter time, and one time he and I went out to the creek 
where Schultz and I had found an otter drag. Here we spent 
over an hour making a most cautious water set for the 
otter (with no result within the time we spent in that 
country, the otter seeming to have left the vicinity on his 
travels). We had a good tramp that day along the creek 
in search of sign, and visited a big beaver meadow, of 
which .John knew. Here we saw the winter home of this - 
industrious animal, and I learned more of its habits than 
I had ever known before. The \?hole creek bottom was 
covered with the houses and dams of the beaver, all hid 
under the snow. Once in a while we saw an open place 
in the water, and at one such spot found the trails of sev- 
eral beaver which had come up out of the water and gone 
far out into the willows and aspens to cut wood for them- 
selves. John said he could trap a beaver or so easily 
enough if he wanted to. He could also get a moose, or 
almost anything else, he said; but all this he was going to 
do "bime-by." So long as immediate want did not stare 
him in the face, he was willing to postpone his operations 
very comfortably. He said he was going to wait till we 
had left the valley, then he would go hunting. Madame 
Monroe was not consulted in these plans to any very great 
extent, though her spouse evidently counted her in as a 
factor. "My h woman, he strong," said John, with much 
comfort in that thought. But Madame, who spoke Eng- 
lish even better than her husband, once told me in a swift 
aside, as they say in the novels, that her private opinion 
regarding her lord and master was, "Him heap lezzy." 
But this state of affairs did not in the least detract from 
the interest attaching to John. 
No Cat Yet, but Another Sheep. 
Meantime McChesney was faithfully hunting at every 
opportunity, so that he and O-to-ko-mi got thoroughly 
acquainted with the big mountain on which I had killed 
my first sheep; yet try as they could, they could get no 
further chance at a sheep. Billy Jackson also had bad 
luck, for the first day he went up to the carcass of my- 
sheep to gather in his big cat from the snares he had set, 
he found that the cord of one of his snares had been cut 
clean off by some sort of animal, which had then departed 
for unknown country and had not come back. He thought 
the cat, lynx, lion, or whatever it was, had been caught by 
the foot instead of the head, and so had had a chance to 
break away. "Never mind," said Billy, "I've got another 
snare up there yet, and we'll get that cat sure. He can't 
stay away from that sheep till it's all eaten up. Give him 
a day more and he'll be back there." 
On this day Schultz and Mrs. Monroe, who were left to 
keep camp, fixed up the lodge in beautiful shape; so that 
after that we had much less trouble with the smoke and 
could keep warm with less trouble. On the evening of 
March 19 we had quite a comfortable reunion. John and 
Mrs. Monroe dropped in for tea, by the merest accident, 
and McChesney and O-to-ko-mi get in a little late and 
very tired and hungry. Billy and Schultz and I all 
rounded up in time for supper, and the prospector, Riley, 
from Midvale, whom I have earlier mentioned as visiting 
at the lodge of John Monroe, also came in after a long 
day's hunt. And of all the men about the fire, Riley alone 
had killed his meat that day. Going up the mountain 
with McChesney for a little way, Riley then swung off to 
the right toward the Cut Bank Creek, and in the afternoon 
was lucky enough to kill a ram, a beautiful four-year-old, 
with long, perfect, sharp-pointed horns. He brought the 
head and part of the meat into camp, and told us where we 
could get the rest of the meat, up near the top of the ridge 
leading down into our valley. The head of Riley's sheep 
was a singular and beautiful one, being in perfect coat and 
in color almost snow white. I have never seen any other 
mountain sheep so white (I never saw a specimen of the 
Stone bighorn from the far North), and none of my heads 
were anything like so white, though very much lighter 
than the heads one ordinarily sees, killed at other than 
the winter season. Riley said he had had a long and 
dangerous climb for his sheep, and had first wounded it 
and then followed it a long way before he was able to finish 
it. He was jttstly very proud of this head, and announced 
his intention of having it mounted. 
March 19 broke warm and fair, and Billy Jackson seized 
this opportunity to break out for the settlements. We 
were now nearly out of grub, and besides Billy's rheuma- 
tism was growing worse, so that he had no comfort in 
camp. Much as we disliked losing him, he had to go. 
He said he would send up some grub to us by the team as ' 
soon as it could get in. As he had to walk only about 
eight or ten miles to the first ranch we had no fear about 
his getting in all right, as indeed hQ did without incident. 
A Side Trip for Sheep. 
It had now become obvious to all of us that it was use- 
