The poor ol’ Pudding has a head full o’ pudding. My germs got to her. She’s sick now, too. But, with Sal, little changes. A few (cute) sneezes and a minor complaint now and then but it is still ‘business as usual’ for her. She’s busy, pleasant and a going concern.

Not me. When I am sick EVERYBODY has to suffer!

Sal is out right now dropping the prawn traps again. We got skunked last time but the season is almost over so she worked the garden this morning and is working the oceans as I write this afternoon. Gotta get some in for the summer right now!

Actually, the season ‘officially’ starts in the first week in May. But that is for the commercial fishery. We amateurs can drop a pot or two throughout the year so long as we never actually catch too much. In May, the prawns come out to mate and the commercial guys come out to catch them. I think that is how it works even if it seems counter-intuitive to generating healthy stocks. But, you know, DFO has a hand in this….

One thing is for sure: DFO is messing up this fishery, too. Honestly, you’d think DFO hated fish/prawns/nature/life-in-general, the way they manage the resource. They are absolutely criminally negligent if not criminal-in-fact in their wanton ignorance and jackbooted arrogance.

Wanna get crazy? Read Alex Morton’s observations from being on the (DFO) Cohen Commission.

Breathe in. Breathe out. R-e-l-a-x……………..

Interesting to note: prawns are BI . They can be male or female as they so choose. I don’t think it is a matter of ‘choice’ as we might think it but it seems that two prawns are exactly the same in March but one of them will carry eggs sometime later in the season and changes somewhat to accommodate that.

If we catch a ‘female’, she goes right back in. DFO allows a few females to be ‘caught up’ accidentally but the pros are pretty good and, as a rule, they are all thrown back but not as quickly as we do.

Anyway, regardless of why it is in May that DFO allows the commercial fishery, it is a devastation. April 30th you can catch some, May 3rd, you get very little. By the end of May – nada. Zip. Zero.

The commercial guys just overwhelm the area. Their traps litter the bottom with as many as 100 traps per set and, if they drop on top of you, you can’t lift the whole shebang so you are trapped. And, if they drop first, your little trap will just get nothing and they will just lift and toss your gear if it gets in their way.

Things can get stressful if you play into that. The pros usually hate each other because of all that.

Most of the prawners are OK guys. We’ve even got a few friends amongst them and they have been up to the house for dinner. But there are some who are kinda whacked. Militant, bad mannered, surly louts who seem to hate everyone, locals, amateurs and other prawners alike.

So, we don’t prawn after the season opens.

Mind you, we rarely prawn even when they are gone. At least we haven’t done much in the past. Maybe a dozen ‘sets’ in six years…? But, with Johns’ new puller, we’ll ‘up’ that to maybe eight ‘sets’ a year I am thinkin’. If things ‘average out’, that means we’ll get about 12 pounds of tails. That’s a dozen good meals or a-dinner-of-prawns-once-a-month. Which is just fine.