In the morning, when one eye struggles to open from a night of sleeping aboard your boat anchored in a Chesapeake Bay cove or tributary, the first sound you'll likely hear will be that of a V-8 engine in near-idle or of an outboard motor, either one passing near the other side of the hull of your vessel. It may take a few minutes for your other eye to open. The sound will still be there. Should you go to the companionway before visiting the head and look out, you will probably see this fellow, or one who shares his purpose.



This fellow, aided by his black Laborador retriever, was passing Robin on July 4 at 6 a.m. A radio was playing aboard his Johnboat as he worked his trot line, harvesting blue crabs. For those unfamiliar with a trot line, it is a long -- up to several hundred yards long -- line onto which are knotted at regular intervals pieces of bait -- often chicken necks -- that are allowed to settle to the muddy bottom of the anchorage. (In our case, the average depth at low tide appeared to be around 10 feet.) One end of the line is fastened to a small buoy. It could be a plastic antifreeze jug.
The crabber -- or trotliner -- has a pulley mounted on the side of his or her boat. He or she lifts the end of the line onto the pulley and then motors forward, hoping to see a crab, its claws gripping a hunk of meat, each time a bait comes up to the pulley.
The crab is not hooked, only holding on to its meal. A trotliner waits with a net on the end of a pole and, if experienced, sweeps the net under the crab just as it lets go of the bait. The movement of the net can be graceful, tracing a shallow arc just above the water and then lifting up over the boat's gunwale where, with a twist of the crabber's wrist, the hooped end rotates and the crab falls into a waiting five gallon plastic bucket and the dog wags its tail, congratulating his friend on another fine catch.
I have been reading James A. Michener's book Chesapeake and had on Sunday just read a passage describing the lives of the Canada geese that migrate from the Arctic to the Chesapeake. Late that afternoon, as I stood in the cockpit looking to the west where a cove indented the shore to my left, I saw the head and shoulders of a Canada goose swimming out of the cove, close to its bank, toward me. He was followed by another goose and another, and his companions followed him as he turned toward my right, still hugging the wooded bank.
I counted twenty-eight geese in that line by the time they had all rounded the corner. Each one followed the bird before it. No one strayed from the line. Their progress was quiet. I heard no honking from my position on the boat about 150 feet from the birds. It was a sight at once curious and pleasing.