Fishing on the Mystic

I spent quite a bit of my youth on and around the Mystic River, in Mystic Ct, (Not Boston). In the 1960's and 70's there were tourist boats and local pleasure craft, but there was a large number of work boats, Lobster, Scallop, Eel, etc.

I was involved working with my neighbor, off season it would be making lobster pot nets, building lobster pots, pouring concrete in the pots and writing the licence number in the wet crete. There was actually a lot of work involved in that business, of all the things to do, salting bait in the fall was by far the least pleasant, in the days before onion bags you would string  the fish, A brass rod, a length of twine, slide the rod through the gills of six fish, hook a string on the rod, slide the fish from the rod onto the string, tie a knot, throw them in a barrel and every so many you would pour salt in the barrel. Once full, you would cap the barrel and set it aside till spring (opening them in Spring was a joy, the neighborhood knew when season started). By the end of the night you were covered in fish blood, scales and salt, all these things by the way attract mosquitoes.

 As a side business he moved into eeling, this meant round eel pots had to be made and baited, for bait you used horseshoe crabs. Catching horseshoe crabs was actually rather fun and easy, Two people would get in a 14' Boston Whaler, with one driving the outboard,the other person would lay on his stomach with his chest and arms hanging over the bow of the boat. As you rode back and forth across the flats (shallow water) with the propeller running through the muck, the person on the front would reach down, grab a horseshoe crab by the spike and toss it in the boat behind him. The crabs are later cut in half and thrown in the eel pots.

Over the years I have touched lobsters, crabs, eels, mussels, clams, snails, sea cucumbers (not used in salad), jelly fish, sea urchins, star fish and a million types of fish. Of all the critters I have grabbed onto over the years there was one I didn't. When we weren't working on the river we were playing with boats or fishing.

On this particular day, we were just off of Masons Island at the reef, My friend had just caught a Blackfish, recast and was sitting there with a stupid expression on his face. Having had just handled the black fish, his cast included my pole (which he was borrowing), it flew out of the boat and disappeared into the briney. It may have been expensive but the look on his face had me in tears. A short time after I got a strike on my pole. I dragged it in fighting it as it played in the rocks along the reef edge, I finally got it in the air next to the boat and it was....nothing I had seen before. I have caught Sea Robins which are scary enough,  BUT THIS WAS DOWNRIGHT FUGLY. 

I started to reach out to grab onto it to remove the hook and let it go, just as I was about to touch it....it Barked. Fish, in my opinion, should not be vocal... this was loud and it started to repeat it. I decided not to grab onto it, I cut the line and let it go "kerplunk" into the water.

Turns out, this was a Toad Fish, or Oyster Toad Fish (They like oysters). It turned out that not grabbing the thing was good because the dorsal fins all have a venom.