Resistance to my entry into the local fishing grounds was fierce. There are multiple ways to screw with another fisherman...some subtle and some dramatic. The first hint that I was unwelcome was the fact that a former close friend who used to be the ‘life of the party’, started dumping his traps so close to mine that we were always getting entangled. I fished ‘singles’ from a 21 foot open boat, and my pothauler was incapable of hauling more than one trap at a time.
When he would later haul his offending pair of traps, rather than take the time to untangle our gear, he would cut my line and retie it with a hard knot.
I used to work with this guy, we clammed together and partied together for years, but when he quit drinking, he became a mean and miserable person.
Another way that fishermen eliminate competition is to make traps disappear. The three main ways of accomplishing this are …
1. Cut the buoy...the rope sinks and the trap is lost.
2. Haul the trap(s), stuff rope and buoy into the trap, and push it back overboard.
3. Drag or drop the trap into water whose depth exceeds the length of the attached rope.
I have never messed with another fisherman’s gear, so I don’t know which is the preferred method. Number one is quick, easy, but the downside is the possibility that another fisherman may get snarled up in the remaining rope and find the gear. If the trap belongs to one of the ‘in’ fisherman, the finder might attached a plastic jug or an old float to the trap and put it back. Otherwise...kerplunk and buh bye.
Number two is more time consuming and risky, but has the added advantage of the lobsters that can be stolen. A foggy day makes number two way less risky.
Number three is similar to number two as you can steal the lobsters if you actually haul the gear, but just grabbing a buoy and tying it off while you drag it out deeper is way less risky but also less profitable.
One day, I discovered an ‘in your face’ method that one fisherman used to mess with me. I hauled a trap that had been squished nearly flat. Now this is no small feat...traps are inherently rugged. If you stick to the edges, you can stand or walk on them. The first time this happened, I brought the trap home and discarded it. After the second time, I started ‘unsquishing’ such traps, an extremely time-consuming but hugely satisfying process.
On the day that I discovered my last flattened trap, I had my son with me as my sternman. Lobsters were crawling and I needed help getting my gear hauled before the other boats ‘helped’ me by cleaning out my traps. We had just hauled and baited up a few strings of gear that stretched around a point of land which put out of sight of the first few traps that we had tended.
As we motored back around that point, we observed one of the bigger boats right beside one of our recently tended traps. When the captain of that boat saw us, he hammered the throttle and sped over to some of his gear. He started to haul a pair but immediately threw the buoy back and sped off at an uncharacteristically high rate of speed.
Of course we checked that trap and, sure enough, the trap was squished flat. We had just accomplished on of the rarest feats in lobstering...we had caught him in the act of gear molestation. After wrestling the trap back into fishing shape, we continued on with our day.
I had been suspicious of that captain since the first time I hauled a flattened trap years earlier. That thieving tub of lard weighed over 400lbs. But now that I knew for sure, what to do?
A new trap costs between $100 and $200 as a general rule. Add a buoy and a bunch of rope and a pair is worth up to $500 to $600. My gear, however, is mostly patched up junk...I have never paid more than $10. for a trap. My rope and buoy is worth more than the cost of my traps. I was now sure of the identity of the culprit, and accepted fishing protocol was to cut a bunch of his gear.
Instead, I cursed him and called down every type of misfortune that I could think of on his blackened soul. I don’t know how effective this usually is, but a few months later he died of a massive coronary. Poetic justice reigned supreme.