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Back Then

Back before there was a limit on the number of fish you caught in salt water, back before you had to measure ‘em,  before freezers and folks, most folks, dug their own bait, Friday nights in the spring were my chore nights. My dad, Tom  my brother and I would go fishing on Saturdays. Friday nights we’d be out snatching crawlers, a big tomato can sufficed to get us through the day. We’d be at the marina around 6:30 in the morning and be back for supper. My mom would pack us a lunch and she’d have the day to herself practically. 

The dad was the dad that everyone wants to have. He knew the fishing spots, he knew the weather, he knew everything. We wouldn’t go far a half mile off the lighthouse on Stratford Shoals was our favorite spot, but occasionally we’d fish the breakwater, the mouth of the Housatonic and sometimes even Charles Island and Middleground Light.  

Flatfish in the springtime, then a mackerel run, some blackfish, and later porgies. We’d anchor sometimes all day in one spot. We did good, too. The “postage stamp” flats went back in as did the skates (which I hated) and those conners or cunners depending who is talking that hung around the rocks with the blackfish. Got some great clams too. Early March was our debut and we’d fish until October. Being a son to this man was sheer happiness.

Tom and I learned much from him, the ways of the water, the ways of nature and the weather. No televisions back then, we did our own weather guessing. We primarily watched the seagulls, they don’t lie. We learned about mackerel sky from my mom who learned it from her father who came from a long long line of seamen. We observed in our own young way how dad could line us up every week at the near exact spot. He told us secrets from before we were even thought about. We were held astonished while he told us one anecdote or another. He told us about the river currents, the tides, the hours that the winds would come up, the times not to venture out, how to read a compass, how to rig lines and why we did it in such and such fashion and several basic knots.

One time, the first time I was out, we were with old Pat Bowe and we had somebody’s boat, maybe Johnny Hines’ who lived on the Point. We didn’t go far, anchored a hundred feet west of the big rock, as it was high tide. I was six years old. I caught my first flat fish. I was hooked. Subsequent trips were made in the Bowe’s 16” boat. My dad, Pat Bowe, myself, or sometimes Fran Bowe, dad’s buddy and Pat’s son.

One day, we went over to Devon, across the bridge and into Red Dial’s (Diehl’s) small boatyard. Dad was having him make a 14' skiff. WOW!! You can imagine how big our eyes got. This skiff was a piece of work. The transom was 1 1/2”  white oak, the ribs were white pine, the stem was of oak. It was a very heavy craft, and also housed ovrer a thousand screws. This boat would never capsize, it would never sink, the only water it took was sea spray.  My dad showed us his knowledge of seamanship when, on the eve of the ’52 hurricane, he set up a three-point anchor. That boat never moved. The dike gave out and there were yachts leaning up against small planes on the runway in back of the dike, but we were sitting there bobbing like a cork. It was powered by a 5-hp Johnson. Well, by a 4 1/2-hp  Champion until it flipped off out in the channel in front of the Short Beach Beacon. Back then everyone had either a five horse Johnson or a five horse Evinrude.

The three of us would strip the boat down in the garage during the winter and caulk it, paint it and make it worthy of it’s name, a semi-V bottom sea skiff. I learned so much from that man.

Then one morning……….. one morning……… we woke up and the balloon had burst………..