August 6, 2013 — On Sunday, June 23, I spent a night on the steamer Rappahannock and witnessed a good day of fishing the following day when the crew caught over one million menhaden.
Amongst the crew, there was jubilant excitement, from dancing to jumping up and down with arms in the air, as the fish kept coming and coming.
“Yeah by God! They’re excited!” said Captain Lee Robbins. “They are making money!”
Robbins is captain of the Rappahannock, a new 196’ × 40’ Omega Protein fish steamer recently delivered to Reedville from Omega Shipyard Inc. in Moss Point, Mississippi.
The 184’ × 38’ Fleeton also was delivered recently by the company, and in May a christening of the two boats was held in Reedville that coincided with Omega Protein’s centennial celebrations, commemorating the company being chartered as Reedville Oil and Guano in 1913.
On Sunday, June 23, I spent a night on the steamer Rappahannock and witnessed a good day of fishing the following day when the crew caught over one million menhaden.
The Start
For menhaden fishermen, that Monday started at about 2:30 a.m. Almost everyone was bunked down until then. There are seven Omega boats fishing this season, and one by one first mates steered their boats away from the docks at the plant in Reedville and into the Chesapeake Bay.
At 2:45 a.m. there was a haze over the moon and a cool bay breeze blowing. All the other boats had white running lights but the Rappahannock had blue, giving it a mystical appearance on the water.
The boats followed each other into the Chesapeake Bay. Most of them headed toward Cape Charles on the Eastern Shore because there had been reports of fish in that area. Menhaden spotters in small planes had gone out Sunday to do some preliminary searching. Evidently there had been some noticeable “whips” up near Cape Charles. (Whips describes the color of the water above a school of menhaden.)
Read the full story at the Southside Sentinel