My daughter Jennifer and my 9-year-old grandson Hayden are still in town for a few more days so we scheduled an overnight trip to another one of my favorite spots, Shelter Cove in Carroll Inlet.
We pulled out of my slip at Bar Harbor just before 11 AM on 06/29/2024, destination Shelter Cove.
We did not stop to fish on the way for this trip, but just went straight there.
We did stop briefly enroute in order to pull the 2 crab pots down and get them baited and ready to drop. When we got there, I dropped them in about 70 - 80' of water directly in front of the USFS dock.
By about 2:30 PM we were securely moored at the Shelter Cove USFS dock. No one else was there.
Hayden immediately got into dock fishing. The fact that it was raining pretty hard did not seem to deter him at all.
I got him a new BB gun this season, a pistol that is powered by a CO2 cartridge, so you don't have to pump it. I can't believe that I didn't manage to get any photos of him shooting it because he spent a lot of time at it.
This was a special trip for me as well because I had just received the Starlink satellite Internet/WiFi system. It is not installed in a permanent location on the boat yet, so I just laid the antenna out on the dock and ran the cable back into the cabin through the back door. It worked splendidly and will be a great addition to the boating experience, especially in the winter when the daylight hours are so short and there is so much cabin time on trips like this.
Later in the evening the rain let up just a little and we decided to have a fire on the dock. Jennifer had gotten me a slick little fire pit that folds up flat into a case and is easy to carry on the boat. I had brought along some firewood, so we sat around the fire for a bit and dodged the smoke.
We had a quiet night on board.
I was up very early on Sunday morning and the rain had ceased for a bit. I took my camera and my telephoto lens and took a walk up the logging road. Without having Nova running ahead the chances of seeing deer are increased.
It didn't take long before I saw this beautiful buck along the road.
Bears frequent this road system as well.
We set some "crab snares" from the dock on this trip. I neglected to take a photo of them, but they are basically a small basket for the bait, surrounded by several loops of strong monofilament line. The idea is that the crabs will get tangled up in the loops when coming in to investigate the bait in the basket.
We got several crabs in this manner, and we lost a few that were hanging on, but dropped off just as we tried to pull them up onto the dock.
When the rain finally stopped, we gathered for a group photo by the boat.
We cleaned up our gear and our mess on the dock and pulled away at 10 AM.
The first order of business was to pull the 2 crab pots. I assigned Jennifer the task of throwing the grappling hook. She missed a few times, but then so do I when I throw it.
We got a pretty good haul of crabs and ended up taking home 8 legal males. We threw back several females and a few males that were too small to keep.
After stowing the crab pots and putting the keeper crabs in the cooler we headed for Herring Cove. We trolled for a couple of hours between Herring Cove and Mountain Point, but only managed to get Kings that were much too small to keep.
We got into the slip in Bar Harbor at 4:30 PM after logging 57 nm on this trip.
Comments