3/23/98.. Eel Pie.

There's still deep frost upcountry, and plenty of snow, but the glass eels are running in the tidewater, and Chicker is down from Millinocket for elver season. His faded green Scout is parked in front of the Lodge each day while he does late lunch at Jeanine's, then he'll spend half the night tending a fyke net by lamplight.

Chicker, Jimmy, Guy, Herbert, Frank, and 3600 other guys slapped down their $300 plus for the new federal licenses, and are out there jostling each other for the best berths.. and the big money. The annual spring travesty is in full cry.

It's almost irresistible. Half crazed with being cooped up all winter. Days finally getting some length to them. Along comes a chance to get out in the weather during mud season, and maybe make a killing. Let's do it. The only other seasonal madness around here is sugaring, and the sap run has been pitiful this year. Between the ice damage and yoyoing temperatures, the sugar boys are lucky to have more than a taste in 98.

Not that the elvers are running hard. They've been scooping them wicked for a dozen years now, and catches are way down from the glory days in the 80s. Nights like the one that Keller and I dipped a pound a minute behind Helen's at the Machias Falls will never come again. But the dream of instant wealth dies hard, and even a few fast dollars in March looks good.

Typical fisherman's logic. Get all you can while they're on the go. There'll be something else to chase next time. Used to be a valid method. Odds were in favor of the fish. Lucky if you could take a living out of the water. Keep at it and Nature always had a new bounty to offer, and a trick or two to keep you humble. We thought.

Now we're eating the seed corn. Catching the juvenile eels as they wriggle in from their birthing grounds in the Sargasso. The longtime eel fishermen know the mature population is plummeting, but they're right out there alongside the other yahoos, skimming off the last of the fry. Chicker spends summer and fall catching market eels in lakes and ponds, and hunts for the big silvers, the broodstock that run to sea in the fall. Getting some scarce, he reports. But the thought of someone else getting the easy money in April, at his later expense, makes him pack up his wagon and scoot south when the ice goes out.

When the Japanese started buying elvers in Maine for their eel farms, in the late 70s, only a handful of hardcases were sniffing around the untapped resource, and the local rules of allocation applied. There was a certain amount of net cutting and name calling each season until things got sorted out. When the market collapsed on us in 1981, and Sheldon was the only buyer still fishing, we went to his facility in Cherryfield, and suggested that his crews might lose a lot of gear, if he didn't buy from us. We came to an understanding.

"You Jonesport boys are always welcome here," he allowed. One of the perks of a local reputation.

It was because of Sheldon's scam (he was selling American elvers mislabeled as much more valuable oriental stock out of Taiwan, and corrupting the rearing ponds with Atlantic parasites), and the opening of Red China to the elver trade, that killed the export business in Maine for almost a decade. But by the 90s elvering was booming, and the local rules no longer applied. Where we'd been dipping for $10 a pound, prices soared to $500 a kilo, and a handful of elvers made a very nice night's pay. Now everyone and his uncle is fishing elvers.

Too late, as usual, the various authorities decided to get in on the act. Institute licensing, write regulations by fiat, try and police a gold rush. As far as the fishermen are concerned the only interest Angus and Uncle have in eeling is to cut themselves a slice of the pie. A nominal license fee jumped to a fat figure, new rules make it almost impossible to go elvering without being in violation of something, and the riverbanks are crawling with wardens.

The heat will tell you they are simply trying to protect an endangered resource, and defuse a potentially violent situation. There has been a bit of gunplay in recent years, as the stakes went up. But the importation of federal wardens from the Carolinas to enforce arbitrary regs, and play cops and robbers, does seem like overkill. But that's the name of the game.

Guy reports that teams of wardens, sheriffs deputies, and tow trucks are out every night. Caught in violation and your truck is impounded (permanently), and you spend the night in jail before you get legal aid. And what kinds of violation? You can't stand in the water while you dip, for example. Or fish from a causeway. The wardens even measured out the 500 feet you must keep from a fishway at one site, put up a red flag, then arrested everyone dipping beyond the flag (technically they were still on a causeway). Pretty clever.

Or how about this: You can only set nets in the shoreward third of a waterway. You have to leave the middle third open. But the shoreward third at high tide may be mudflat at low tide, leaving your nets grounded out. Oop. Then you are killing bycatch fish, which are protected, before you can release them. VIOLATION. Not to mention freezing your elvers, this icy week.

When Guy told a warden that there was no way he could set a net without being in violation, and he might as well leave it in his truck, the warden said, "That's probably where it oughta be."

Probably right. But if you're going to outlaw elvering, just do it. Many of the other long time eel fishermen would be just as glad to see a ban, but "they couldn't milk us for all those fees, then, could they?" Smells like eel bait to me.

I suspect the authorities, in their bureaucratic way, are "gathering evidence." They are videotaping and digital photographing the endless lines of nets, the parade of dippers, the whole scene. By writing regs and proving widespread violations they can justify to themselves an outright closure. Meanwhile plainclothes enforcers have bagged poachers for selling before the season opened, and have been snooping around the dealers' premises. Well, turnabout is fair play, and one dealer snapped a digital photo of the snoops and posted it on his website for other dealers to check out.

We can hope that they shut it off, for the right reason. But the price has fallen sharply due to the Asian economic crisis, and between that and the costs and the harrassment, the elver caper may collapse of its own accord. Meanwhile, wanna buy a fyke net?

We just crossed over the equinox, and the silly season is upon us. It's a sure sign when Chicker turns up.