Remember the old television show, “Mr. Lucky?” Well, you can start calling Winter Harbor fisherman, co-op president and harbormaster Dale Torrey by that name. On June 14, he pulled up one of his small traps off Turtle Island. Wedged in the back part lay a female blue lobster weighing 11 pounds.
“I had to cut the guy wires to get her out,” he said. While he was trying to extricate the monster blue, she nipped him on the arm before he could band her claws. “She was ugly,” he said. “She didn’t want anyone frigging with her.” The blood on his right arm is visible in the photo.
Since his open-heart surgery last September, the 55-year fishing veteran has taken his grandson along as his sternman. “That boy was excited,” Torrey said. “I tell you, he was some happy.” As for Torrey, he said, “That made the day!”
Although the female had dropped her eggs, because Torrey is licensed to take females to the lobster hatchery at Southwest Harbor, he delivered her to the Mount Desert Oceanarium, where she’ll be on display. He noted that her tail had never been punched.
Although that “ugly” big blue is the largest blue lobster “Mr. Lucky” has trapped, she was just one of six blue lobsters he’d caught. Torrey’s companion, Mary Lou Weaver, who was his sternman six years ago, said that during that time, “He caught a bright orange one with black dots. He called it psychedelic orange!”
But there’s more: Two weeks after catching the 11-pound blue, Torrey trapped another blue weighing a pound and a half. He said he’d read that the chance of catching a blue lobster is a half million to one.
And he seems to have passed that luck on to his son, 34, who has been fishing since he was 17 and caught his first blue lobster July 3. Torrey said his son told him, “Dad, you and I have the hold on the blue lobsters.”
Three blue lobsters in two and a half weeks. Mr. Lucky, indeed.
— Sandra Dinsmore