Our group had just settled in for the evening at “Jimmy’s Place”, the Bed and Breakfast we were staying at in Bay de Verde. It seemed like we had surely reached our daily limit of interesting stories, great food and incredible vistas. The only thing left to top off the day was a stimulating group conversation with these amazing people, perhaps slightly lubricated by a cold glass of local beer.
We were almost to the point of having all the world’s problems solved when Dee, the town’s tourism director (for lack of a better title) came busting in the door. We had met Dee earlier in the day when we toured the town’s crab processing plant.
“Come on down to the pier! The guys are squid jiggin'”
How in the world could we pass that up?
We threw on our jackets, grabbed our cameras and drove down the hill to the wharf. The crab season has ended now, and cod fishing won’t start for another few weeks, so the local fishermen are sort of “between seasons”. To help pay the bills and for general subsistence, they’ve been happy to see a recent influx of squid into the local waters, including right there in their harbor.
Squid jigging, we learned, is pretty simple. The fishermen were lined up along the pier, under the lights of the crab plant. No live bait is involved, only small spinning lures with tiny hooks on the end.
The squid they were catching were about twelve inches long, and about three inches in diameter, with tentacles that extend out another four inches or so. The only trick to catching them is that once you’ve landed one, you don’t want to find yourself with the tentacle end of the squid pointed towards you. If this happens, you are likely to have squid ink squirted on you!
Valerie, one of our intrepid guides and a squid jiggin’ novice like the rest of us, jumped right in and grabbed a rod from one of the fishermen. Within just a few minutes, she had landed three squid on the dumpster top and had single-handedly turned around what had otherwise been a slow night of squid jiggin’ for the local boys.
We’re convinced that Val is now the stuff of local legend. The tale of the night the pretty young American girl from Buffalo, New York, came to Bay de Verde, magically churned up the squid jiggin’, and put smiles on the faces of a pier full of fishermen, will be told for generations.
Paul's Point of View 