Warning: Don’t feed the fish your fingers

Tuesday with…

BOOTHBAY HARBOR – The other afternoon here at Fisherman’s Wharf, a city slicker was parading and bragging before a vacationing, captive gallery that he’d been bitten by a fish. Yes, sir, a tiny fish, one that protested it had been hooked by this beer-belly, and to display its anger, the creature took a chunk out of big mouth’s right index finger. Pity he hadn’t been attacked by a shark.

Yet, there is a lesson to be learned here.

The slob wearing the dirty underwear quite obviously had put his stubby finger into the mouth of a small bluefish. The struggling blue resented itand took to dining on mouthy’s eating hand.

Anybody with an ounce of brain matter knows that a foraging bluefish is an animated chopping machine. A brutal cannibal with an insatiable appetite. The surge of bluefish now threatening and invading the waters outside this bustling village are endowed with an awesome dental arrangement. The bluefish slashes schools of baitfish, and fingers – snapping, chewing, gorging until its stomach is packed. Then it regurgitates and feeds some more. It is considered, pound for pound, one of the fiercest fighters and these days, practically supports the rod-and-reel industry.

The bluefish not only attacks other fish, baits, lures and half drunk’s exposed fingers, it has been known to attack bathers. The first recorded instance of blues attacking people was in Miami. One bather required 55 stitches to close a wound. There have been several instances of bluefish attacks since, and likely, this July 4th dash to the bluefish fishing grounds will see more cases of man-bitten-by-a-fish.

In this part of the world a year ago, bluefish came sweeping into Casco Bay and the outreaches of the Kennebec, driving thousands – possibly millions – of bunkers before them and filling the coves, shorelines and boat docks. There were reports of people taking a common fork and pitching them into a boat or throwing them on the ocean banks.

The porgies (bunkers) have been showing up for a couple of weeks now. Going in schools in pursuit of fish not much inferior to themselves in size, they move along like a pack of wolves, destroying everything before them. Their trail is marked by fragments of fish and by the stain of blood in the seas, where the fish is too large to be swallowed entirely, leaving the hind portion bitten off and the anterior part allowed to float away or sink.

No less an authority than Jack Gibbons, the Fisherman’s Wharf chief executive and sure-handed putter on the Boothbay Region Country Club’s hairy 135-yard 8th golf hole, asserts that the bluefish’s appetite contributes to its rapid growth. A 5-pound blue in June offshore at Boothbay or Southport may be an 8-pounder by mid-October.

Blues are fairly abundant on the eve of summer’s main holiday. Prospects are good, or at least promising, that anglers will pick up a bluefish or two as part of the July 4th celebration.

Like other coastal stops, Boothbay has a fleet of charter boats armed to take anglers to the grounds.

Capt. Matt Wilder was scrubbing the decks of his well-appointed Bertram boat the other day when we asked about bluefish prospects.

“Our people would rar variety. But blues are the one fish many charters exist on. It’s what we have on the Maine sportfishing grounds. They are vital to the charter boat industry. Anglers want to feel them pull. That’s why they pay anywhere from $50 to $250 for a day’s fishing.”

There are many methods and ways to catch the bluefish madness. They are caught by trolling, chumming, bottom fishing and casting lures, from both boat and shore. Lures include feathered jigs, spoons, plugs, rigged eels and rubber tubes. Hooks should be long-shanked and extra heavy. The jumbos will straighten out a light hook like it was a loose piece of spaghetti.

When bluefish school and take part in the Fourth of July parades, they’re like a pack of hungry wolves, anxious to do business on anything from menhaden to middle fingers.

A final warning: don’t feed the bluefish unprotected fingers, else you may end up looking like the jackass on display at Fisherman’s Wharf at Boothbay, where the people are this July 4.