By "Tackle Box" Billy Kelley

2009 Season Preview

Ahoy, maties, fans and fellow fishing aficionados (love that word)! Hope you lasted another cruel Maine winter, or at least that it was better than mine. I had to suffer some deaths of friends and the death of a kind of unique relationship which, unfortunately, was with my collaborator on this column. I’ll miss her feminine perspective. (Goodbye, Diane.) But not to worry. I’ll muddle along through this as best I can.   

Now, that being out of the way, let’s get to the subject at hand: fishing. Well, there ain’t none, unless you count a few stray pollacks, which my pal Debby’s cat Abigail won’t even eat. That’s OK, though. They’ll be here soon enough.

Meanwhile, you know, years ago in England they had these boats called “ships-of-the-line,” staffed with maybe 500 sailors apiece, they were, and quite majestic, actually. Now, in those days shore leave was very rarely granted, desertion being a real problem. So invariably all these sailors being out at sea for seemingly eons would be craving some female companionship.  

What to do? Well, obviously, have the ladies of the evening come visit them onboard!

Now, this being well before the days of birth control, many of these ladies would be pregnant. And how these sailors bunked down was this: they’d sack out in a hammock strung between two cannons on what was called the gun deck, with a curtain for privacy. Now, these ladies who were pregnant may sometimes actually go into labor during their trysts. And occasionally they’d be having a rather tough delivery, so they’d shoot the cannon to sort of help them along.

Neat, huh?

Unfortunately for the newborns, they’d usually end up in a sort of naval orphanage, where they could honestly respond to being questioned: “I’m a son of a gun.” Hence the phrase to this day.

And how ’bout this: Ever have a “square meal”? Well, on these ships the ol’ tars would have a bowl of some kind of stuff like gruel, I guess you could say, for breakfast. And for lunch, ditto, like mush. However, supper would be meat, potato and veggies served on a square piece of wood. Now we got square meals!

I bring these up for two reasons. First, I thought it interesting. Don’t you? And secondly, it’s a good opportunity to remind people just how relevant our ocean’s history has been to our lives — our heritage, actually.

Did anyone know that Portland was once the eighth-largest port on the Atlantic Seaboard? How I wish the younger generation could have seen Commercial Street as it once was. Now, I’m not going to bore you with a trip down memory lane, but I want to remind everyone the impact our harbor has had on all of us.

I try to stay out of the political thing. It’s definitely not my cup of tea. But I must say, seeing how Portland City Hall can’t seem to give the Maine State Pier away, we’ve still got a great place to fish, at least for the foreseeable future. (By the way, is this not a good time to take a deep second look at the Maine State Pier development plan I worked on with my pal Chris Busby? I think so.)

Now my plan… I’ll be taking a look at Mackworth and Peaks Islands this year and let you know about that. I’ll also be taking a look at local bait and tackle shops and keep you in the know about how things are there. And talking to a local longtime commercial fisherman and checking out the impact there is from sport fishing. And, of course, I’ll be drumming up a new collaborator to make sure I bring you the female slant on things.

So get your gear ready, check your line and tackle box. I see a real good season coming. I’ll see you at the pier. We’re off to the fuckin’ races, dudes!

“Tackle Box” Billy Kelley’s column appears seasonally.