Lobstering in the Maine. ME lobsters.
It’s said lobstermen and lobsterwomen are born, not made. For starters, Maine is lucky to have a coastline, to be on the Atlantic Ocean. All those ragged, rocky juts of Maine land out into the
briny, misty water take a life time to discover as a tourist. The quaint Maine harbor towns and fishing villages are a big part of the Vacationland attraction.
This blog post about lobstering in Maine.
Like the agriculture farming and forest timber lifestyles, lobstering or any fishing coastal endeavor takes a lot of discipline. The stakes are high. Long hours too that start early, extend late. There is Maine weather delivered up good, bad and worse.
Fishing in Maine is like farming the waters off the coast using boats, buoys and lobster traps not field tractors and implements.
The Maine lobster market prices up and downs means you have to manage your money well. Your overhead continues no matter how many Maine lobsters crawl into the hauled up watery traps. Like many Maine industries, going bigger to monetize production is the trend. But this blog post on lobstering in Maine focuses on the smaller, family fishing operations.
Videos on lobstering in Maine are the easiest way to deliver the goods.
The promise of the blog post title uses your eyes and ears today. Like lazy man’s lobster where everything is steamed, opened up, cracked and buttered. Need a bib? You better put on a bib. Squirts happen around the lobster feed setting.
First up a video on ME lobster family traditions, those raised deeply steeped drenched in lobstering in Maine.
It takes seven years for a Maine lobster to grow to the legal one pound size to avoid being thrown back into the sea.
The Maine lobster season starts early and runs late. Even when on shore and the boat parked rotating on a very large sunken weight or tied by ropes securely dockside. The work continues repairing lobster traps, preparing the bait, fueling up the boat with diesel and supplies for the next day on the high seas off the coast of Maine. Lobstering is hard like farming or woods work to shut off and walk away for a spell.
The Maine lobstering industry supplies by far the most of any the United States.
120 million pounds, a record year in 2018 shows the demand far beyond the safe harbor towns and villages along the Maine coastline. What’s hauled up and delivered to dining tables around the World makes lobstering in Maine a 500 million dollar industry.For tourism and the fine lobster meat that you work hard to get to at the table and using your wallet.
Learn the parts of the lobster boat explained by Leroy, your personal guide. Happy to share what he knows brought up on the Maine coast and spending time at the helm of a lobster boat to earn his keep.
Lobster boat stations Maine video.
Local Mainers are the luckiest, and we eat a lot of lobster, steamed clams, mussels, crab cakes and more from the coast.
Up here in Aroostook County fresh lobster caught this morning is delivered to local grocery stores and stored in gas tanks that amuse the youngest in shopping families. Or Maine lobster from say Milbridge peddled from the backs of pickups of enterprising fish vendors. Ones who spend the long day at a farmer’s market or sitting in empty parking lot location waiting for customers. Leaving for another lobster haul from Downeast Maine when the truck is empty and there is no more to sell today.
About 8 percent of Maine lobster fishing licenses are held by woman… let’s shadow watching a video on one lady lobsterwoman of Maine.
How long is the Maine lobster fishing season?
Year round although some months better than others. How well you do lobstering in Maine depends on how good you are at showing up to work, staying healthy, being lucky running a tough business. One faced with lots of curve balls and variables to keep you on your toes in the rocking sea swells wrestling with lobster traps you drop and hoist. GPS used to remember your locations with your own unique colored lobster trap buoys marketing who is who’s pots.
A delicacy for the hoity toity well heeled upper crust of society using many forks, knives, spoons and fine linen napkins, silver serving dishes.
Lobsters once were considered a poor man’s food fed to only servants and peasants. Bottom feeders dining on other lobsters, clams, crabs, mussels and many fish species. Living on the bottom of the ocean mopping up the dark debris. Maine lobsters taste better due to the cold clean fresh water around them. Maine lobsters have poor eyesight, teeth in their stomachs and molt their shells up to twenty five times in their seven year trip to adulthood.
Only about one tenth of the thousands of lobster eggs created by the female survive to the larvae stage. The first Maine lobster catch was around the year 1605. Lots of fresh catch washed up on shore after Maine seacoast stormy weather allowing lobsters to be caught by hand not just by boat. Lobsters in Maine not so heavily fished, not so widely and wildly popular either in the early colonial days.
Maine lobster prices are low right now because of COVID19.
Available for direct delivery to the consumer but not being served up by third party restaurants and tourist outlets along the Maine coastline. There are over 4000 fishing boats in Maine. With Maine lobster prices per pound averaging around six dollars or less and not the usually nine dollars, to survive takes a strong money management skill set.
Lobstering in Maine is rugged work. It means heading out in all kinds of weather with no guarantees of what the haul will be that day. Amazing sunrises, sunsets and whale tail sighting independence aboard the lobster boat solitude.
Maine lobster boat races for bragging rights and entertainment among competing communities. Not so unlike our fierce basketball circuit year after year rivalries. The kind that put any size Maine school system on the map around tournament time. With winning scores and plays that demonstrate what a winning sports program can achieve in spirited competition.
Lobster boat races are the Downeast Maine version of tail gating. The video of get togethers around small, tightly connected coastal fishing communities below.
Maritime history, lobster boat ship building best design debates, fish or cut bait do or die determination story tell.
Lobstering in Maine is not for everyone and like farming you go big and into debt gambling it will pay off someday. Or stay family small and with everything around you kept paid for free and clear. You hope. Lobstering in Maine is real World and sobering but the salt air and freedom of the open sea setting shapes a person. Much like the job of Maine lighthouse keeper kept prisoner on a distant island offering coastal navigation assistance. But like on a Maine farm, you ate well from the bounty of the land. Served up farm to table. You do the same on the harvest hauled up keeping your sea leg balance from down under the sea.
Here’s a video on lobster fishing lifestyle from a Corea Maine family.
Lots of family recipes for the surf and turf abound online with Maine culinary suggestions from the natives.
The final product enjoyed by presidential retreat families, average Joe and Jane tourists and down to Earth Maine families lucky enough to live full time here in Vacationland. Many recipes back from a time when waterways were the only highways in and out of the coastal regions of Maine (then Massachusetts) inked on the nautical maps first. Before moving inland to discover and settle other special inland Maine rural community locations. All this talk about Maine seafood, lobster fishing is making me hungry. You too? Let’s check in with a native and hear in his colorful expression seasoning how he makes his way around the Maine coastal kitchen. Take it away Leroy!
Here’s a video about making Maine lobster seafood chowder.
Let’s eat while the carefully made Maine lobster stew is hot off the stove in the Maine kitchen.
Pass me the black pepper will you please? Stay safe, stay healthy as we ride out the pandemic storm. I hope you enjoyed this blog post on lobstering in Maine. Thank you for following our Me In Maine blog posts, our wordpress site built with the help of a down country webmaster. Thank you Prisca, owner of The Port Webdesign. Happy New Year and looking forward to creating more simple living blog posts on Maine in 2021!
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker