This page is to give some incite into the fishing industry me being deck boss for past year or so and a deckhand 16 or so odd years before that fishing for lobster on New England's Georges Bank on the F/V Jenny D Im gonna share some of the highs and the lows of my career and give a bit of information about how we do what we do

The Fishing
Lobster fishing is done with 4'x3' traps or similar size set in trawls of between 20-30 pots strung together in one line with a anchor on bot sides attached to a buoy and high Flier To set a trawl you stack the pots in a specific pattern on the stern IL tell you why that patterns important later in my story you then give a ONE-TWO-THREE GOING OVER CALL and push the anchor over the back and watch the pots get sucked to the deep
When hauling pots the captain runs up alongside the High flier the man on rail usually me or Jon grabs the flier with a gaft hook hauls it on board with the use of a power block just like the on on a crab boat when the pot surfaces you crab it run the knot over the block send the pot to the second rail guy who picks the lobster out and rebaits the pot with a bait bag the pot is then either stacked by the greenhorn on the stern for imediate reseting or stacked in the rack for moving
one guy band the lobsters on the table and drop them in we then give the captain the count then turnaround and do it all over again

The Storys

Im gonna start out with the story of probably the scariest thing to ever happen since Ive been on board we where in 7-10 ft seas taking poppers( waves that just roll over the side not much water in them) over the side not bad by our stadards well we had the last Trawl to move after some horrible numbers we had them ready the green horn had stacked them ready to move them so we toss the anchor the pots go 1 over 2 over 3 over then it happened the horn stacked them wrong he put the 4 pot on the bottom all the way in the back so when the 4 one went off the remaining 21 tried to go with it the back is only so wide so they got stuck in there almost crushing our green horn at the time Josh the pots being under so much tension from pull of the boat all that went over because when the mass flew back some of the other pots went in making the hunk even heavier we started cutting away as many pots as we could teing what we could before we lost it all

The Green Horn out Makes us well this is a pretty good fish story from about 1998 the boat used to pay greenhorns a set salary. Well it was a awful trip we just made enough to cover boat cost which means I as full share walked away with about 150$ the greenhorn walked away with about 600$ needless to say that was the end to a set salary

Ive been in the water 4 times in my years never one time that we were not at dock first time I slipped getting on to the boat a lot like captain John did in season 4 second time the dock was like one sheet of ice I jumped of the boat on to the dock slipped and kept going right into the 45 degree water third time was not as bad as the last two as it was during summer Johnny my long time friend and brother-in-law thought it might be fun to Baptiste the greenhorn in the harbor we grabbed him we through him in and I went with him. Fourth and final time was last winter we were waiting for the captain to come we decided it would be a fun idea to play some football on the deck Johnny throws i go for the catch but quickly remember the boat is only so long

Thats 3 story's for now more to come later


Common Green Horn questions I'm gonna give some common questions people have if you have any feel free to post them and I will do my best to answer them

Q: How many hours will I work
A: The best answer I can give is until the jobs done but usually between 24 and 48 hrs

Q: How hard is the work
A: Very no only is it physically demanding but also very physiologically challenging

Q: Whats the hardest part of the job
A: I would have to say the constant movement of the boat and the weather

Q: where will I sleep
A: When you do sleep the bunks are about 5ft long for a guy about 5' 10" I have to curl my legs up to sleep


this is just a platform if any of you have a question want to know something send me a message ill get back to you