The lure of the bay

Bite me. Rattling lipless crankbait lure, aka rattle trap.

This one is mildly disabled, having had its back treble hook removed last October when we got into a big school of hungry, easily caught schoolie stripers and I was sick of foul hooking them.

Fish or cut bait? My husband and I did both today on Great Bay. We cast lures, and we also cut chunks of frozen herring and dropped them to the bottom with sinkers, going after stripers. No luck.

A Guide to Striper Lures

But the bay is a beautiful place, with or without fish. It is rimmed with lush green. The topography is gently varied; there are some exposed rock features. There are not too many houses, and the ones you can see you wouldn't mind living in. The upper reaches of the bay smell saltier. The southern end smells like the muddy freshwater rivers that gush into it. There is still a tide, but the salt water sinks beneath the fresh water like a secret ocean.

Water temp was 61, air was definitely not the 70˚ the weather man promised. Partly cloudy and wicked breezy southwest wind. I wore my sweatshirt hood. We watched four F-16s take off from Pease Airport, with a vertical climb almost straight up like rockets. We saw nesting osprey, with noisy cheeping young.

We saw one other boat out fishing too, with four old guys in hats. And the Marine Police in their boat with tinted windows, with nothing to do. Crazy rip currents at the changing of the tide. We sometimes mistook the ripples and rough water for stripers feeding at the surface. We should be so lucky.

Back at the boat ramp at Route 108 on the Squamscott River, we met two more old guys in waders hauling out an aluminum boat. They had a bushel and a half of oysters, freshly dug.

"For my mom," said one of the old guys. "She loves to make oyster stew."

UNH Oyster Restoration Project

Scientists Add New Life to Decimated Oyster Populations

After spring rains, a reign of oysters

"We've got as many as 2,000 young oysters per square meter out there," Grizzle said. "That's over 10 times what we get in a good year. This is unprecedented in our record books."

Become an oyster foster parent

The Perpetual Oyster

Much imagination and invention has gone into the gradual evolution of what humans regard as food.

Excellent book, by my favorite food writer and one of my favorite writers, period: Consider the Oyster, by M.F.K. Fisher, "our poet of the appetites."

Comments

[John B.]

I love fresh oysters; here in Kansas, though, they're all but impossible to find, for obvious reasons. But, I'll be heading to Mobile at the end of July . . . maybe then, even though it's not an "R" month.

I can see this place because of your post. Well done.

[Amy]

Bon appetit, John B. We will go for Wellfleet oysters at the end of June, when we visit Cape Cod.