Out on the Eastern Shore

Date: Mid-August

Weather: Beautiful

Beer: Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA

            Maryland is an amazing state, I love it. It has it all: the Chesapeake, the ocean, amazing seafood, crabbing, clamming, Smith Island Cake, trim, and great beer. The Eastern Shore is its own world complete with a charming, slow pace of life where stores close on Sunday set in the beautiful countryside.

            Crabbing is just wild. You simply hook a chicken net and throw it out 10 feet in front of you and wait till you feel the line twitch. Slowly pull in the line until it is close by and have your partner scoop up the crab with the net. My first crab was huge and we kept it for dinner. While Dan and I were crabbing, we were also clamming. When you feel a golf ball sized object under your toes in the muck, just pick it up. Steamed up, it tastes like a gamey oyster.

            Late one evening, Dan and I strung up our fishing lines and crab pots and headed out to fish near the 

bridge to Assateague Island. The big surf rods are a blast to cast with four ounce lead weight attached to it. It’s much different detecting a bite in saltwater than my usual freshwater haunts. 

             As the light faded, I felt a big tug on my line and did an over-the-shoulder heave to set the hook. What progressed was a thirty minute battle. The fish was a bull, I had never hooked something this big, and it fought hard to stay at the bottom. As I reeled it within 30 feet of me, I felt the line slack so I reeled in quick but found the line had broken. I drowned my sorrows in some Dogfish 90 Minute IPA.                                        

            Fishing in a canoe out in Maryland is a lot different than the Boundary Waters. I’m sure I blew every Pennsylvanian tourist’s mind when I threw the canoe on my shoulders and tied up a homemade anchor with a rope and rock.  First, boaters have no sense of courtesy in breaking their wake. Second, there are some big fucking fish out here. 

            For a while we caught croaker after croaker, they went through our bait.  The only downside was slicing up fresh pieces of squid; their ink filled the bottom of our canoe and stained the clothes in my Duluth Pack. While we were slaying croakers, Dan had a big bite. Initially, we thought it was a flounder. It stayed close to the bottom and we didn’t even get it to the surface during the first 30 minutes. After many long runs causing the pole to almost double over, Dan hauled it to the surface. Lo and behold, it was a huge skate, at least 30 pounds. We fought it for a while longer but landing a fish like in a canoe is whole other ballgame. I reluctantly cut the line and set it free.

            Maryland is just a sweet, lovely state that I wish I had more time to explore. That’s the sad part about vacations, they end too soon. It was so fun, a great break from school and St. Paul, and just making some great memories. Getting back into the swing of things in Minnesota is little hard now, I wish I was back in Maryland.