He held the bottom of the double paper bag with a pair of big callused hands, and the liquid leaking from the inside dripped wet the bottom of the double paper bag.

"There isn't a galvanized bucket, so he stuffed the fish fillets into the food bag and asked me to give them to you."

Manuel works as a foreman on the manor farm of the Haffenreffer (Narragansett Brewing Company) family farm in Little Compton, which is adjacent to a fishing vessel at the mouth of the Sakonnet River. He and the staff in the trap house are very friendly. They admire his wife for exchanging his wife for fresh fish baked goods as a gift.

"So it looks like cod was operating offshore earlier this year; are you ready to travel?"

The farm master answered the guards affirmatively, and they began planning a long journey along the river to the prolific ocean rock pile. That was long before the tugboats fished their deep water in large quantities and moved to the shore. Before gillnets were installed along the rugged bottom, these boats could not safely tow the nets without tearing or hanging. When the French fries began to scratch the customer's hand, the janitor reached into the cabinet and took out one of the large commercial dinner plates discarded by Bridge Diner. We scooped up the tableware as if we had won the lottery.

The watchman was in a good mood.

"Get the medicine boy. We have something to celebrate."

At that time, there were few medicinal materials in the form of homemade brandy, which was brewed in an illegally operated winery in the dirty cellars of three apartment buildings near Blondie. There were a few bottles of almost empty "medicine" in the kitchen cabinet, but the main supplies were at the bottom of the guard's locker, behind his paddle, and under the gas tank and half of the World War II cork life jacket.

I am one of the few people who know this hideout, it has never been found in front of outsiders.

He put a nickel coin in the soda can, asked me to get myself a bottle of RC Coke, and then started refilling his collection so that I could make sure it was safe before anyone else showed up.

I washed my hands with spicy star anise soap, then peeled the kraft paper from the pile of fish fillets in the deep dish.

The men raised their wine glasses and began to grin, because the early cod was a boon to those offshore fishermen.

When my mentor made their plan, I sipped a long-necked Coke. I took the thick fish fillets home to my mother, and more importantly, I received an invitation to join on Sunday morning. I walk in the air.

Long before the advent of graphite rods, braided threads, round hooks and the Internet, there were nearly a dozen members on the dock holding their pipes, cigars and hand-rolled cigarettes and wandering around.

I climbed the rugged 18-foot-high slope with Manuel. Manuel was the watchman and someone I had never met. It turns out that he is one of the trap fishermen and he has an influence on where we can find cod.

The reliable 15-horsepower Scott Atwater started pulling for the third time, and after a puff of black smoke, she settled down and cleverly pushed us about 24 miles to a ledge about 50 feet deep near Newport.

After disembarking from the boat, Manuel and our guests started using a bushel of sea clams as bait, and the guards prepared hand ropes in anticipation of our arrival.

What happened next was still the fuzzy trolling of an almost uninterrupted morning.

Grumbling belly began to remind me that I hadn't drunk cereal or milk for eight hours, so I took a break and ate a piece of PB & J, when the guards broke out.

"What happened to all the clams?"

God bless, we have no bait.

The men had to take out dozens of cod, tautog and some plate cups from the live net before they could be dragged aside.

Despite the wet and bumpy weather, I slept all the way back to the club and got a bunch of fish fillets as a reward for me. However, after hearing the great news, I was never invited to one of the trips again, because senior members and seniors took priority over errands.

The comeback of cod caused an escape and limited the number of seats available for local ships heading to the cod farm.

That was then and now it is.

After this encouraging period, offshore cod populations are under increasing pressure, as traditional cod farms such as the Southwest Reef in the Norman Islands, the rock structures offshore of Newport, Rhode Island, and Plymouth and In the waters near Manomet, these cod populations are beginning to bottom out.

Those that can be reached by small boats and there is a reasonable expectation that enough cod will be caught for table use.

The bearded Winter King has become so rare that the employees of the trapping company and local customers hoard a few cod caught.

Then, we experienced a long period of time, and bass fishing became a kind of curiosity. Most fishermen maintained this kind of curiosity, hoping that they might repeat this anomaly when they travel to the same place next time.

In the mid-1980s, I spent the winter on my boat in Scituate Harbour. At that time, I did not shovel snow from the cockpit. We were fishing for cod in the water less than 100 feet deep a few miles from the entrance.

Every year we encounter more and more gillnets and less and less cod, until we finally give up the once very valuable fishery.

Around that time, the recreational cod fishery became a fond memory.

About ten years ago, when writing my weekly fishing report, I began to hear that cod was accidentally caught in the same fish, black bass and silver carp fisheries.

Many of these cod are legally sized, ranging from 4 to 7 pounds, and occasionally steaks like the 31-pound Fred Souza, which were caught near Westport in late June last year.

Although most of my spring and early summer fishing is in fairly shallow waters, we started to count as many as 12 cod, ranging from 18 to 28 inches. These are white belly instead of the red belly that is commonly referred to as the year-round Offshore site administrator.

More members of the entertainment and six-person charter fleet began to report and show images of cod mixed with their bottom catch.

Those of us who have experienced abundance to destruction begin to experience a calm optimism that cod may be more than just an occasional by-catch.

Until his untimely death, former fishermen editor Tim Coleman will start calling me in late February, urging me to lift the ship’s ice cover and winterize it so we can start We have been conducting pre-spring expeditions in Rhode Island Bay, Browns Ledge, Vineyard Sound and in good weather conditions, Nomans Island can supply early season cod.

In the years since we started these adventures, I don’t remember one time we didn’t catch enough cod to share with family and friends. There were a few times when our numbers and sizes were large, mainly in classes of 5 to 8 pounds. , I can sell.

Early in that season, I ensured that there were fresh clams on the boat. Although the jig caught some, the bait was more efficient.

Every fishing day from October to Christmas, if legal, charter planes and private boats are fishing for legal cod as a reward.

Today, when Massachusetts fish cannot be legally caught or kept in our state, I am worried about the future of cod. The fragile synonymous populations from Cape Cod to Block Island may once again be overfished under similar circumstances.

We cannot allow this to happen.