March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

`Cashing in’ on observations could leave you broke

FEATHERS ‘N FINS

You know how it is. Not long after you find a comfortable stump at the edge of a cutting – and that takes some scouting around – you begin thinking: “Maybe I should move over to the other side, that way I could watch that twitch trail, too.”

Surely, there have been times when such observations paid you dividends. But to call a spade a spade, more often than not they left you bankrupt. In line with that, I can recall a number of times when I would have been better off had I stuck to my original plan. For example:

The regular duck hunting season had ended so I had drawn a bead on “coot” (white-winged scoter) shooting. Now, it happened that the late Mike Doyle, who I worked with in the composing room of this newspaper, had an appetite for coot stew. He also had a friend he called “Mac,” who had a cottage on Hadley’s Point in Trenton Narrows.

Accommodating birds, those coots. They had a wonderful habit of winging into the narrows to feed as the ebbing tide brought the mussel-laden bottom closer to the surface. As the flocks came lumbering along low to the water, the long, curled finger of Hadley’s Point beckoned to them. Suffice it to say, Mike Doyle arranged for me to leave my double-ender boat on Mac’s dock.

A snowflake fell into the boat as I slid it into water as gray as the dawn. As I loaded my gunning gear into it, coots were trafficking. I noticed, though, that they seemed to be tending toward the Jordan River on the Lamoine side of the narrows. Allowing that they’d discovered fresh mussel beds, I decided it would be worth the extra rowing to rig my tollers in that area.

By the time I reached a point of ledges near the mouth of the river, it was snowing so fine and fast that it appeared as fog. Pay-day, for sure. In fact, as soon as a few of the dozen cork-bodied tollers were rigged on an anchored line, flocks of coots tipped their wings toward them.

With the boat hauled onto a ledge smothered with rockweed, I crouched beside it and stuffed 3-inch magnum 4s into the 12-gauge pump. Say, those white-wingers scaled in there like soldiers bound for the beer hall on two-for-one night. In a matter of minutes, three were floating feet up – lead shot was legal then.

But with no retriever to do the dirty work, I had to fetch the feathered forms that the wind – blowing straight down the narrows – and tide were whisking away. While rowing back to the point, I kept looking over my left shoulder to keep my bearings on the shoreline which was nearly obliterated by the storm.

I was coasting along pretty good when what appeared to be a flock of coots came drifting down on the tide. Trouble was, though, they were all bunched up and bobbing instead of swimming – my rig of tollers was headed for Frenchman Bay. After rescuing them, I discovered that the rust-weakened metal snap-swivel on the lead toller, which was attached to the anchored line, had broken off.

All the while, the storm hurled winged darts. Singles, pairs, and bunches of coots, old squaws, and bluebills swept past. Blinded by the snow, many of them veered sharply to avoid me. Eventually, I reached the anchored line’s buoy. With the tollers again tugging in the tide, it didn’t take long to knock down four more coots, making a limit of seven. After all that rowing and rigging, in less than an hour it was time to “take ’em up.”

You may know that jockeying a boat and taking up tollers at the same time keeps you busier than a bird building a nest – especially when wind and tide are running the same course. With tollers strung on a single line, though, the easiest method is to haul the line’s anchor into the boat and tow the rig ashore. That is, if you can haul the anchor.

Apparently, the lead weight had wedged itself into the crevice of a ledge. For whatever the reason, it wouldn’t budge. Several times I rowed to the buoy, grabbed the line, and hauled for all I was worth, which wasn’t much while slipping and stumbling in a boat swamped with snow. Naturally, the boat swung broadside to the wind in a matter of seconds, which left me with two choices: let go or be pulled overboard.

Intending to give it one last try, I pulled hard on the oars. That’s when the brass fixture holding the port side oarlock tore loose from the old double-ender’s punky gunnel. Make no mistake about it, sport, I cursed coots, anchors, rocks, oarlocks, wind, snow, and mostly myself for not staying on Hadley’s Point.

But thank God for that double-ender boat, which could be paddled as well as rowed. Using an oar, I paddled ashore and weighted the bow down with a couple of rocks. As an aside, try to find a couple of rocks on a ledged shore. Returning to the buoy, I cut the anchor line and quickly hauled the tollers clunkety-clunk into the boat. Then, kneeling in the stern and using the wind as a compass, I paddled and sculled toward the invisible Trenton shore. Let’s just say I’ve had better boat rides.

Adding insult to injury, a raft of coots were feeding in the froth breaking over Hadley’s Point. Wouldn’t you know it? When I gave Mike Doyle the makings of a coot stew at work that night, he said, “It must have been a little wild down there today, wasn’t it?”

With a nod I answered, “Worse than that.”

Note: I won’t be cutting your trail here next week. I’m off to a pool where I might hook a marlin – on fly-rod tackle, no less.


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