Chesapeake Bay Magazine April 2021

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What is Included in the Purchase Price of a Used Boat?

By Grady Byus, Yacht Broker, North Point Yacht Sales

W

e are commonly asked, "what is typically included in the purchase price of a brokerage boat?" Brokerage or used boat purchases tend to be a bit more straight forward than a new boat purchase. New boats typically come with options and extra features that can drive the price up or keep the price down.

Most used boats are listed on an MLS like Yacht World, BoatTrader, or Boats.com. Lets assume you see a boat from Yacht World that you are interested in. The listing built for that boat should give a good list of what equipment comes with that boat to give you an idea to start. That listing is often referenced in a purchase agreement stating you are agreeing to purchase the boat as detailed in the listing.

When you visit the boat there may be personal gear from the current owners, spare parts, and other items not detailed in the listing. In any case, I recommend you request a list of the items that will convey with the boat. Sometimes it is simpler to ask that the boat only have items onboard that will convey for the survey, that way you can visually inspect everything you are buying.

Now that you have an idea of what equipment and gear comes with the boat, you are probably starting to tally the cost of the other purchase expenses. The Purchase Agreement used by most brokerage firms is written by Yacht Brokers Association of America (YBAA) and helps explain who pays for what and who does what during the purchase. The buyer is responsible to pay for the survey of the vessel, and any expenses incurred in doing so like launching the boat if it is on the hard.

Buyers are also required put the vessel back as it was prior to the survey. Aside from survey expenses, you will pay taxes on the vessel in the state of use, and will likely have a small processing and registration fee from the brokerage firm handling the paperwork for the closing of the transaction.

There are likely one or two brokers involved guiding the sale and purchase of this boat. Who pays them? The seller likely has a listing agreement in place that states he is paying the selling broker 10% (on average) of the purchase price of the vessel.

If you as a buyer have your own broker, there is no out of pocket expense to you. Your broker then splits the brokerage fee with the selling broker.

It is a common misconception that having a buying broker either costs more out of pocket or increases the sale price of the vessel because two mouths are being fed. It is our experience that is simply not the case and having a buying and selling broker involved leads to more successful transactions.

Still have questions? Contact us at North Point Yacht Sales and check out more articles like this online at northpointyachtsales.com

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HE MAY THINK HE’S THE CAPTAIN, BUT

Volume 50

Number 11

PUBLISHER

John Stefancik

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Meg Walburn Viviano

MANAGING EDITOR Chris Landers

Cruising Editor: Jody Argo Schroath Multimedia Journalist: Cheryl Costello Contributing Editor: Susan Moynihan Editors at Large: Wendy Mitman Clarke, Chris D. Dollar, Ann Levelle, John Page Williams Contributing Writers: Rafael Alvarez, Laura Boycourt, Larry Chowning, Ann Eichenmuller, Henry Hong, Marty LeGrand, Emmy Nicklin, Nancy Taylor Robson, Karen Soule

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jill BeVier Allen

Contributing Photographers: Andy Anderson, Mark L. Atwater, Skip Brown, André Chung, Dan Duffy, Jay Fleming, Austin Green, Jameson Harrington, Mark Hergan, Jill Jasuta, Vince Lupo, K.B. Moore, Will Parson, Tamzin B. Smith, Chris Witzgall

PRODUCTION MANAGER Patrick Loughrey

SENIOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER Mike Ogar

ADVERTISING Senior Account Manager Michael Kucera • 804-543-2687 m.kucera@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Senior Account Manager Megan Tilley • 919-452-0833 megan@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com

Publisher Emeritus Richard J. Royer

CIRCULATION Susan LaTour • 410-263-2662 office@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com

CHESAPEAKE BAY MEDIA, LLC Chief Executive Officer, John Martino Executive Vice President, Tara Davis 601 Sixth Street, Annapolis, MD 21403 410-263-2662 • fax 410-267-6924 ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Editorial: editor@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Circulation: circ@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Billing: billing@ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com Chesapeake Bay Magazine (ISSN0045-656X) (USPS 531-470) is published by Chesapeake Bay Media, LLC, 601 Sixth Street, Annapolis, MD 21403. $25.95 per year, 12 issues annually. $7.99 per copy. Periodical postage paid at Annapolis, MD 21403 and additional offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes or corrections for Chesapeake Bay Magazine to 601 Sixth Street, Annapolis, MD 21403. Copyright 2021 by Chesapeake Bay Media, LLC— Printed in the U.S.A.

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contents

CBM

Eel’s the real deal. p. 50

FEATURES

50 License to Eel Gilbert Klingel’s Bay 58 The Eastern Shore’s 70 Starting Nine

Kate Livie gets hands-on with the Bay’s slipperiest fishery.

Marty LeGrand on the life and work of a pioneering naturalist.

April 2021—Volume 50 Number 11

Where We’re Headed

Clayton Trutor looks at homegrown baseball greats past and present.

16

TALK OF THE BAY

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Pride of Baltimore II Schooner’s

new mission hits close to home—Mary Rose Madden.

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Oysters on the Side Rafael Alvarez stops by a roadside oyster stand.

16 Baltimore

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50 70

33

Rock Hall, Md.

70 Easton, Md.

58 86

33

Occoquan River

58

Solomons, Md.

86 Mill Creek

Live Oak A southern tree face challenges in Mathews, Va.—Kenny Fletcher.

28

Mathews, Va.

82

Virginia Beach, Va.

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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

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On the Cover: The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Photo by Jay Fleming

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April 2021

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KATE LIVIE

40 Boats Not to Miss

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contents

April 2021

Columns

33

Chesapeake Chef: Blue Catfish

36

On Boats: Sportsman Open 232 CC

82

Wild Chesapeake: Catch & Release

86

Jody’s Log: Mill Creek Magic Capt.

36

Capt. John Page Williams is doing the environmental thing in the tastiest way possible.

A family-friendly center console with serious fishing capabilities—Capt. John Page Williams.

When Capt. Chris D. Dollar loves something, he lets it go.

Jody Argo Schroath visits Mill Creek. All the Mill Creeks.

Departments

Bay Partners

12 14 96

76 90 95

From the Editor Online Stern Lines

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CBM

from the editor

The Rarely-Seen Chesapeake

by Meg Walburn Viviano

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Connecting visitors to the Chesapeake Bay’s history, ecology, and culture.

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April 2021

I

got my first real taste of Chesapeake Bay trivia while standing in the CBM offices, in front of a floor-to-ceiling map of the entire Bay. “Did you know the oldest shark fossil ever found was in Chesapeake Beach, Md.? Did you know that the largest naval base in the world is at the mouth of our Bay? Did you know that the last federal lighthouse built on the Bay (Baltimore Light) had a nuclear-powered light in it?”

The facts come rapid-fire from CBM Publisher John Stefancik. In speaking about the Chesapeake Bay, “Did you know…” is a phrase he repeats so often that the staff teases him mercilessly.

Undoubtedly, John’s vast store of Bay trivia (and earnest enthusiasm in sharing it) is part of why his “Weekends on the Chesapeake” boat show seminars are so well-attended. This region has so many nooks and waterfront crannies that there are always new secrets and backstories to learn.

Indeed, my favorite bits about the Chesapeake Bay are the ones I’ve never heard before. And the stories in this April issue fit the bill.

Did you know there’s a handful of watermen who still make money eeling, manning their traps in the dark of the morning? Contributor Kate Livie does, because she struck up a conversation with some eelers on the Sassafras River last fall and got herself invited out fishing. Livie gives us a glimpse inside this rarely seen fishery.

Did you know that Mathews County, Va. marks the northernmost spot in the world where you can find the South’s iconic live oak trees? The great sprawlers you’d most expect to see on a South Carolina plantation actually have important roots on the lower Bay. Did you know that as early as 1935, a Chesapeake naturalist named Gilbert Klingel invented his own diving bell to study the bottom of the Bay? He breathed air through a repurposed garden hose, and somehow lived to tell the tale.

Did you know Maryland’s Eastern Shore has produced more Major League Baseball players than you can count on two hands? I’m not talking about the players brought in to play minor league ball for the Delmarva Shorebirds (though they’re a lot of fun to watch, too). I mean true Chesapeake native sons, growing up between farmland and winding waterways, and later ascending to baseball’s biggest stage.

The beauty of the Bay region is this: With 11,684 miles of shoreline, a person can’t possibly know about all of it. And that’s why, even after 49 years and 11 months, Chesapeake Bay Magazine still has new stories to tell.

That’s right: Next month CBM turns the big 5-0! Look out for our special 50th anniversary issue, and please—if you’re a longtime subscriber, email me to share your oldest (or best) Chesapeake Bay Magazine memories.

Meg Walburn Viviano, raised on the Magothy River, rowed on the Chester for Washington College. She wrote her first Chesapeake Bay Magazine feature as a 19-year-old intern. After a decade producing television news, Meg returned to CBM to launch the Bay Bulletin online news site. She now leads all of CBM’s media content, and enjoys the Bay with her husband and two young sons. You can reach her at meg@chesapeakebaymagazine.com.

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Cicadas are Coming! What to Expect in the Bay Region It happens every 17 years, but still feels creepy. Charlie Youngmann reports on what local experts want you to know about the impending cicada arrival. Read more at chesapeakebaymagazine.com/cicada. u Sign up for the Bay Bulletin, CBM’s free weekly e-newsletter, online at chesapeakebaymagazine.com/baybulletin.

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CBM

talk of the bay

Pride of Baltimore II

Pride in the City The Pride of Baltimore II begins a mission at home

by Mary Rose Madden

COURTESY PHOTOS

T

he past year has had most of us turning our attention homeward, and the Maryland schooner Pride of Baltimore II is no exception, as the organization behind the wide-ranging ship looks to better serve its home port.

The ship was built in the late 1980s as an ambassador vessel, representing Baltimore and its history by sailing to more than 200 ports in 40 countries. Now, says Jeffrey Buchheit, executive director of Pride of Baltimore, Inc., the Baltimore City nonprofit is turning its focus to Maryland’s youth. They’re set to offer several free educational experiences in 2021, in hopes of reaching underserved populations and getting kids of color out on the water. “This

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April 2021

summer, we really saw clearly that we need to do more . . . to ramp up our exposure, opportunity, and access,” says Buchheit.

Buchheit says Pride II’s employees and its board of directors are questioning what it means to be an ambassador in the 2020s. Last summer, when protests unfolded around the world calling for racial equality in the United States, the nonprofit’s leaders and staff confronted the question, “What is our new role?”

The president of the board, Jayson Williams, wrote to potential funders and asked, “How do we make Pride of Baltimore II an agent of change?” Williams is the first Black president of the board, and he’s been in the position since 2018. “We plan to work proactively on helping the broader tall ships community acknowledge that many in the Black comunity see it as an industry/sport for whites and not everyone else.”

Statistics about the backgrounds of tall ship sailors are hard to come by, but one indication came up over beers at a recent gathering of former Pride crew. Stephen Russell, a former crew member, asked about 20 other alumni, covering the span of Pride’s history, how many other Black crew members they could recall. Around a dozen names were called out—a small fraction of the hundreds who’ve crewed the boat and its predecessor.

Williams says that Pride II is facing its past and shifting towards a more racially conscious mission. “We will work tirelessly to raise more money to educate communities about job opportunities in sailing and port communities. I will also ask the board to direct our staff to focus more of our grant writing to fund programs that will support underserved communities’ access to our education programs for free.”

Williams wrote in his letter that the Pride II staff will undergo diversity

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and bias training. “Silence is not an option,” he wrote, “and listening without action is unacceptable.”

As a result, this spring and summer, if COVID-19 safety restrictions allow, Pride of Baltimore II will offer new programs to bring kids onboard the ship and into the world of maritime science. Buchheit says they will focus on kids from underserved communities.

Scott Sheads, a retired National Park Service Ranger-Historian at Fort McHenry who volunteered as a Pride deckhand for 25 years and wrote several books about the War of 1812, says Baltimore became famous, in part, because of the contributions of its privately-armed, U.S. governmentauthorized vessels—privateers, similar to Pride II. In the ensuing years, the many Black sailors and shipbuilders

Schoolkids learning the ropes.

who played a role were often left out of that history.

“It’s a very important part of our history and it’s certainly not discussed as much as it should be,” Sheads says.

“Free Black men couldn’t enlist in the U.S. Army, but they could enlist in the

U.S. Navy and they could get a job as a privateer.”

Pride II will host free day sails for students and families in eight different ports: Baltimore, Annapolis, Havre de Grace, St. Michaels, St. Mary’s City, Solomons Island, Chestertown, and

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CBM

talk of the bay Georgetown. If all goes well, that could put 1,620 people out on the water—and 300 of those kids will be from Baltimore City, says Buchheit.

Many Baltimore kids haven’t had the opportunity to go out on the water and become familiar with this cultural symbol of their city. “These full-day sails will be an on-board, immersive experience in sailing for kids,” says Patrick Smith, program coordinator for Pride II. “We had at least three trips planned for that in 2020,” he says, and he was more than a little disappointed when they were forced to delay the program’s first year. “But we really hope to do this in 2021.”

Pride of Baltimore II is also partnering with Baltimore County Sailing Center (BCSC) this summer to offer a two-week sailing camp for kids ages 8-18. Donations to Pride’s Junior

Pride has run educational programs on board for years.

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Sailor ScholarShip will help provide funding. And the Pride of Baltimore Junior Sailor Camp is currently raising money to offer financial aid for six spots.

BCSC, a nonprofit organization located at Rocky Point State Park in Essex, Md., accepts kids from Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Anne Arundel County. And young people of color will be prioritized, according to Buchheit.

The campers will learn how to sail and have fun, but Smith also hopes that, “by providing financial aid to kids who want to learn to sail, we can introduce them not only to the skills to sail and operate a boat, but [help them] realize that sailing and working on the water can be a job.”

That’s what happened to Russell, a marine pilot for the Baltimore City Fire Department and a member of Pride of Baltimore Inc.’s board of directors. Raised in Baltimore, Russell was about 13 when a friend invited him to the family’s Annapolis cottage and took him out sailing. Maneuvering the boat through puffs of wind for the first time was an experience like no other. “It was just fun. Like riding a motorcycle, without a helmet,” he remembers.

The next summer, his mother saw a flyer for a free sailing camp. She signed him up for 10 sailing lessons.

There were kids from all over the city in that camp, he remembers.

“Every zip code, every neighborhood—every neighborhood type.” Two people he met that year, in 1977, are still his closest friends. “We learned hard skills like how to make the boat move. And we learned soft skills like personal responsibility, decision-making, working together.”

All of it built self-esteem, he says, and “that geometry class—that was the furthest thing from my mind, but I

was using it.” Russell says he distinctly remembers thinking, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

The sailing school was run by Ed Kane, who for years ran Baltimore’s water taxi service, ferrying tourists from the Inner Harbor to Fort McHenry and points in between. Jobs aboard the boats formed an entry point for a generation of young mariners, including Russell.

Russell went on to become one of the few Black Pride II crew members, earn his U.S. Coast Guard license, serve on Lady Maryland as a deckhand, and teach at a marineoriented school for youthful offenders.

He looks back at sailing school as a formative experience, and one that gave him direction, pointing him towards a life spent on the water. But that kind of opportunity was a rarity—one Russell was thinking about on April 27, 2015.

He was on a fireboat in the Inner Harbor when the unrest surrounding Freddie Gray’s death began.

“Everybody knows the anatomy of a riot. It doesn’t just ‘happen’,” Russell says. He heard the outrage and walked away motivated to move the needle. He wanted inner-city kids to have the opportunities he’d had out on the water.

Besides the shift towards educational opportunities, Pride of Baltimore, Inc. is also updating the stories they put out to the public about the ship. “Just like so many others,” says Buchheit, “we’re ‘waking up’ even more to these stories of African Americans who were enslaved and free Blacks who were caulkers.

Without telling that part of the story, we’re not telling the whole story.” h Mary Rose Madden is a Baltimore-based reporter. She’s filed for NPR, WYPR, The Center for Investigative Reporting, and Baltimore Style.

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CBM

talk of the bay

Elwood “Don” Clark at his oyster stand at the side of Baltimore Annapolis Blvd.

Oysters by the Side of the Road

by Rafael Alvarez

JENNIFER BISHOP

E

lwood “Don” Clark of Baltimore’s Brooklyn neighborhood has long loved his life as a dealer of fishing equipment and fresh seafood. Now 84, he’s been at it since Jimmy Carter was president, from his store on South Hanover Street, not far from the Beaux Arts cantilever bridge where people have used chicken necks to catch crabs for more than a hundred years.

“We sell everything there for fishing and crabbing, but when I first went into the business there wasn’t enough [trade] to make a living, so I started selling seafood,” says Clark, who still lives in the rowhouse just off of Patapsco Avenue where he was born and raised. “Been there all my life,” he says. “Might as well stay now.”

In the past 12 months, a most unusual and troubling year, the veteran fishmonger has come to a conclusion: “With the pandemic, everybody in the world had nothing to do. So they went fishing.”

Sales of bait and tackle, he says, increased dramatically. That’s pretty much his summer game. On weekends in winter, from November through the last day of March, you can find Clark and his daughter Darlene Munker on Baltimore Annapolis Boulevard just off the corner of Furnace Branch Road in Linthicum.

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On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday afternoons, their truck is the place to buy “USA” shrimp, crab meat, Hooper Island soft crabs and, as the big sign says: OYSTERS / QUARTS / PINTS / SHELL. A little folding table behind the gate of his pickup is ornamented with a cairn of oysters and a shucking knife for first-timer customers who want to sample the product first. “Business is good,” says Munker, “but it was better when more people cooked at home.”

Her Pop is not sure why, but this year’s Super Bowl game—when heavy snow fell in the Baltimore area until about noon—was the most disappointing NFL championship for sales in memory.

“Worst one ever,” says Clark, noting it has traditionally been a great day for oysters and shrimp. “I did better the week before with no Super Bowl and snow has never been a problem. If

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“Obviously, if you don’t love life, you can’t enjoy an oyster.”

—Eleanor Clark, The Oysters of Locmariaquer

Oysters to the Chesapeake Bay by filmmaker Sandy Cannon-Brown.

“They were fat and almost cream colored, little giblets of tonic from the sea, as a writer once called them.”

Horton is pretty sure that the writer was Eleanor Clark (1913–1996) and the quote from her 1964 National Book Award-winning Oysters of Locmariaquer. The book details the life of the oyster found on the shores of the River Auray and the people of Brittany who have been dependent upon it for centuries. It is very likely that the oysters praised by Ernest Hemingway in his Paris memoir A Moveable Feast were from the region.

“As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling…”

Those looking to shirk lonely feelings while passing Don Clark’s pickup (in the same spot for 35 years) would be indebted to the Crassostrea virginica, better known as the Eastern oyster.

Today, Clark gets his bivalves from Sea Cap in the Jessup wholesale market, but, he says, “Years ago we’d meet the oyster trucks down by the Potomac River Bridge every Thursday,” for weekend sales.

And now, the side-of-the-road season is done for Clark. Through the summer, he carries a bit of frozen seafood at the Hanover Street store, some soft crabs every now and then.

But you won’t see his truck by the side of the road again until the first of November.

“I love what I’m doing; to me, it’s not work,” he says. “I don’t know what I would do if I stopped. You have to have a purpose and this is my purpose.” h Rafael Alvarez can be reached via orlo. leini@gmail.com.

JENNIFER BISHOP

the Ravens were in, it would have been tremendous. I always pray for them to go all the way.”

Ah, the intoxicating world of if.

If it were still the late 1880s, upwards of 15 to 20 million bushels of oysters would have been taken from the Chesapeake Bay. Some 140 years later, during the 2019-2020 season, a little more than 270,000 bushels of wild oysters were taken.

Clark’s time by the side of B&A Boulevard ends each year at the beginning of this month, the last on the calendar spelled with an “R” until fall.

Ancient belief holds that it’s only safe to eat raw oysters in months spelled with an “R.” Though the adage persists, the accepted wisdom is long debunked— particularly with the advent of oyster farming—and the delicacy appears on restaurant menus and seafood markets throughout the year. When it comes to sucking them out of the shell, however, cold water oysters are preferred, and this past winter produced especially delicious oysters throughout the Chesapeake.

Richard Guantes Snyder, a Pasadena photographer, shucks his own most weekends between crabbing seasons. He gets his oysters from Annapolis Seafood Markets on Forest Drive, which offers the mollusks year-round.

“The Bay oysters were great this year,” says Snyder, who learned to enjoy them as a kid when his father would shuck a dozen or so with friends.

Chesapeake nature writer Tom Horton agrees. “I’ve had some superb oysters from Tangier Sound this year,” says Horton, who in 2012 narrated the documentary Spat! Bringing Back

Clark has seen swift sales on fishing and crabbing equipment since the pandemic.

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CBM

talk of the bay

Southern Live Oak Faces Northern Challenges story and photos by Kenny Fletcher

A

long a quiet stretch of the lower Chesapeake, a graceful live oak spreads its evergreen canopy across white sand. Birds call from branches that cast an oasis of shade over dune scrub and marsh grasses.

I’ve paddled to this isolated spit of land in Mathews County, Va., to visit an extreme outpost of this iconic oak species. Mathews is the northernmost place in the world where tree-sized southern live oaks grow in the wild.

Drifting along in a canoe, I spot a half-dozen live oaks that have toppled into the water. Waves lap at curling branches and bleached-out trunks. The dead trees have fallen victim to the erosion and rising waters that are changing the Bay’s shoreline.

Wherever they grow, live oaks inspire reverence and legend. Their arching limbs often reach twice as far as the tree is tall. Farther south, their branches drip Spanish moss and sprout gardens of ferns.

While often associated with the Deep South, the tree’s Latin name gives away its local roots: Quercus virginiana. They are common in parts of Hampton Roads, where groves fill parks and line streets. Virginia even has a striking historical giant,

A stand of live oak trees showing signs of saltwater intrusion.

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the Emancipation Oak, known as the site of the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation in the South.

In Mathews County, a beautiful peninsula about 25 miles up the Bay from Hampton Roads, these oaks are mostly found along sandy shores and marshes.

When Bob George moved into his home in southern Mathews in 2000, the property’s live oaks were a major selling point. “They were like huge umbrellas that touched the ground almost 360 degrees around. It was such an ecosystem,” George said. “My late wife loved those trees. She referred to them as the ‘bird hotel.’ Hundreds of birds of multiple species would roost and nest in them.”

Over the last 20 years, severe flooding in George’s backyard has gone from once or twice a year to more than a dozen times annually. Brackish water lingers for days in the yard. Spots that used to be green lawn now host armies of fiddler crabs.

About half of the live oaks on his property have suffered and died due to the inundations. Leaves dry up, bark falls off, and branches rot. About two years ago a storm toppled the largest of the oaks, nearly two feet in diameter.

“It’s a real shame,” George said.

Surprisingly, the tough conditions along waterways likely helped the Mathews oaks gain a foothold north of where they’re typically found.

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“Live oak can tolerate salt spray and other maritime influences that suppress competing trees,” said Gary Fleming, an ecologist with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation who documents native live oak trees. “In Virginia, live oaks tend to like habitats where not too many other trees can grow.”

The groves and isolated trees in Mathews County are the northernmost recorded populations of the species, except for a few small, shrubby specimens on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, Fleming said. Because they can survive severe conditions, these oaks may have outcompeted other species to colonize exposed areas along Mathews shorelines.

The tree’s strength made Mathews live oaks prized for shipbuilding, a major industry in the county in the 1800s, said Dennis Crawford of the Mathews Maritime Museum.

While they rarely grow straight, the live oak’s dense, weather-resistant wood was in great demand in the 18th and 19th centuries because it is perfect for ship ribs and braces. In the Deep South, the U.S. government even held forests of the tree in reserve to supply timber to the Navy. Demand only fell after the advent of steel ships.

Though the shoreline of Mathews has always shifted due to erosion, like many low-lying places on the Bay it is also losing land to sea level rise and more extreme storms. Most of the live oaks in Mathews grow near the southern end of the county, where almost all of the land lies at less than five feet in elevation. While oaks on higher ground can remain safe, coastal Virginia is extremely vulnerable to climate change. Waters have risen nearly a foot in Norfolk in the last 50 years, and sea level rise rates are now accelerating.

Matt Kirwan, an associate professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, studies the effect of sea

level rise on coastal forests. Live oaks “are a classic maritime forest tree that even grows on sand dunes,” Kirwan said. “Live oaks are one of the only trees that can grow in that stressful of an environment.”

However, they just can’t withstand constant saltwater inundation or severe erosion. When trees die due to rising waters, “we’re losing a bit of our history and a bit of our culture,” said Kirwan. The demise of some of the northernmost live oaks is another example of how the Bay is constantly changing.

Despite this change, a new generation of Mathews oaks is taking root. One October day, George and I collected a bag full of acorns from some wild live oaks on his property.

After raising seedlings from the trees for two years, I donated four of the small trees to the Norfolk Botanical Garden.

The Garden advocates for educating the public about native plants and the plant and animal communities they support. That includes adding live oaks to its collection of local plants. “Certainly these live oaks from the northernmost native range must have an added degree of adaptability to the local area, at least in cold hardiness compared to trees from more southern locales,” said Brian O’Neil, Norfolk Botanical Garden’s Director of Living Landscapes.

While future generations might find fewer live oaks in Mathews County, they will hopefully be able to visit their offspring. O’Neil hopes that decades from now “tour boats would glide under the outstretched branches of these trees along the Garden’s canal systems.” Those trees will be a reminder that the southern live oak graces the Chesapeake’s shores. h

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Kenny Fletcher is a writer in Virginia always on the lookout for a great story in Chesapeake country.

April 2021

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chesapeake chef

A Blue Cat Love Story

CBM Blackened Blue Catfish

by John Page Williams

for catfish?” mused “WhyCapt.fishMike Ostrander.

Denson’s Grocery Blackened Catfish Fillets INGREDIENTS 1 pound catfish fillets, skinned 2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil ¼ cup Spice Bouquet Blackening Seasoning 1.

Spread olive oil onto both sides of the fillets and liberally coat them with Spice Bouquet Blackening Seasoning. Add extra seasoning if necessary.

2.

Place heavy skillet (preferably cast iron) over medium heat.

3.

When skillet is hot, sear fish quickly on each side, just enough to cause fish to flake. Serve immediately.

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MD DNR

“Because there are lots of them, they are easily accessible, they bite readily, they pull hard, and they are great to eat, in the proper size range. What’s not to like?”

Ostrander grew up “just goin’ fishing” with his father on the Shenandoah River and Northern Virginia’s Burke Lake. “My dad just loved to go, to be out there on the water,” he continued, “but in high school, I got serious, trying to figure the fish out, taking on that challenge.”

In the late 1970s and early ’80s, he fished from shore—often at night—in the Potomac’s Occoquan River and at the mouth of Quantico Creek by the Possum Point power plant. He caught mostly channel catfish and occasional flatheads. (The Potomac has since developed a strong stock of blue cats; more on that later.) He bought chicken livers for bait, but also waded, catching minnows with a small seine and a cast net by the light of a lantern. He used them for cut bait, a highly effective technique for catfishing.

Today, Ostrander still wades to catch bait in warm weather, but these days his clients “make bait” with him if they are seeking flathead cats from his raft in the Falls of the James River at Richmond. Those expeditions are part of his Discover the James guide operation, along with both trophy and “eater” blue catfish voyages on the tidal James below Richmond aboard his 24' pontoon boat, Discovery Barge II (named after Captain John Smith’s shallop).

Over the past two decades, people from all over the United States have joined him to fish for trophy blue catfish in the 30- to 75-pound range, as well as the smaller eaters (12 to 25", or one to seven pounds) that are best for human food. Sometimes he even fillets several and grills or fries them aboard to share with his clients.

Blue catfish are not native to the region, but for better or worse, they have flourished in the lower salinity tidal waters of our Bay’s tributaries and upper main stem. The largest of the North American catfish species, the blues are native to the Mississippi River drainage basin, where they grow to as much as 150 pounds. The Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources (then named the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries) stocked them in the James, Mattaponi, and Rappahannock Rivers in the early 1970s to enhance recreational angling opportunities. The fish found plenty to eat (especially the abundant mud shad) and thrived in these big rivers. They can tolerate salinity up to half the strength of seawater, so wet years in the 1980s allowed them to spread into

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the Pamunkey, Piankatank, and Potomac rivers. In more recent years, heavy rains in the Susquehanna River Valley have allowed the blues to spread into most of the rivers on both sides of Maryland’s portion of the Chesapeake, too.

Small, eater-sized blue cats, which feed on a wide variety of plant food as well as small shellfish, insect larvae, and worms, are plentiful.

Today, less than five percent of the blues in the James are longer than 25", and the proportion is even lower in the Rappahannock.

Was introducing blue catfish to the Bay system a good idea? In hindsight, the answer is debatable, but they are here now, so the realistic question is how best to manage them.

Since the 1990s, fishery agencies, universities, and other research institutions in both states have worked together on management strategies to control them.

Meanwhile, recreational anglers wrestle with the rivers’ large trophy blues, frequently in catch-weighrelease tournaments. Others concentrate on the eaters or cheerfully accept them when they take bait meant for other species. In fact, as limits on rockfish tighten to help that species rebound, Chesapeake anglers are gradually accepting blue cats as legitimate game fish worth taking home for supper.

Watermen on Bay rivers from the Susquehanna and the Choptank to the Potomac, Rappahannock, and James

are catching them in pots, pound nets, and fykes to satisfy a growing market demand. NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay Office has convened a Blue Catfish Work Group of scientists, fishery managers, watermen, seafood dealers, guides, and recreational anglers. (Capt. Mike Ostrander and this correspondent are both members.) The aim is to develop policies that control the high numbers of smaller fish, taking advantage of them as reasonably priced, fresh, local seafood and encouraging the recreational fishery.

“If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em!” has become a motto to make good use of the blue catfish resource. As people further south and in the Mississippi Valley have known for

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years, catfish have flaky, white meat that fits a wide variety of cooking methods. The traditional recipes involve filleting, skinning, breading, and deep- or pan-frying, but the fish works well grilled, baked, poached, and smoked as well. Restaurants including Boatyard Bar & Grill in Annapolis serve them in fish tacos, and Chef George Betz there builds his signature gumbo around a couple of fillets. At Denson’s Grocery in Colonial Beach, Va., chef/owner Rocky Denson blackens them with a proprietary rub from Spice Bouquet or dips them in fresh buttermilk and then a mixture of House-Autry Seafood Breading Mix and cornmeal before frying.

Capt. Ostrander likes to marinate his fillets in French’s yellow mustard for an hour before frying or grilling them.

A good alternative to frying is breading fillets and baking them in a hot oven (around 450 degrees) until they flake. Catfish flesh is naturally moist, so it stands up well to the oven.

So back to Capt. Ostrander’s original question: “What’s not to like about blue catfish?” Well, there is a legitimate worry that this voracious fish can disrupt Chesapeake river systems, but science is telling us that they are adjusting without radical damage to native stocks such as blue crabs, eels, or American shad, instead concentrating on the abundant mud shad. It’s imperative that we continue to monitor the stock and adjust management accordingly. And as we strive to reduce pressure on rockfish, blue cat offers both food and recreation. Don’t argue with what our Bay is giving us. Catch ’em up and eat ’em with a smile.

CBM Editor at Large, educator, guide, and author of three quintessential Chesapeake Bay books, John Page Williams was named a Maryland Admiral of the Bay in 2013.

chesapeakebaymagazine.com/news April 2021

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CBM

on boats

Sportsman Open 232 CC

by Capt. John Page Williams

A Sportsman Open 232 CC

COURTESY PHOTOS

LOA: 22' 9" Beam: 8' 6" Draft: 14" Weight: 2,750 lbs. (dry) Max HP: 250 Fuel Capacity: 95 gal.

People Capacity: 10 Available through Riverside Marine (riversideboats.com) and Oyster Cove Boatworks (oystercoveboatworks.com).

s a company, Sportsman Boats may be only 11 years old, but there are years of boat manufacturing experience baked into its foundation. President Tommy Hancock grew up in a solid, nononsense, South Carolina boatbuilding family in the 1980s and ’90s. After selling the company in the early 2000s, he took several years off to hunt and fish, but watched the industry closely.

Hancock was intrigued with what he saw as advances in materials and manufacturing processes, sensing a wide market niche for family-friendly center consoles with serious fishing capabilities. He and a partner started Sportsman just as the U.S. economy began to recover from the Great

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Recession. It was a good call—the company’s boats have become mainstays for the two Chesapeake dealers, Riverside Marine in Essex, Md. and Oyster Cove Boatworks in Gloucester and Virginia Beach, Va. We had a chance to give the versatile Open 232 a sea trial on Mobjack Bay on a calm day in February.

Take a good look at the specifications: the 232 hull runs on a moderate-V surface with 18 degrees of deadrise. Powered by a Yamaha 250XB (mechanical controls), it rose onto plane easily, with minimal bow rise, aided by a little attention to engine trim and the trim tabs, and throttled back to stay on plane at 15 knots. It was happiest at 25 knots, burning a little over 6 gph (at 3,000 rpm). Top speed with two aboard just touched 43 knots at 5,900 rpm. Though that kind of speed is rarely useful in our Bay’s open

u Learn more about the Sportsman Open 232 CC at sportsmanboatsmfg.com.

waters (and it froze our faces on the winter sea trial), the 232 provides plenty of power for carrying a group of up to 10 people, even when holding a cooler full of ice and food while towing a tube. Meanwhile, the sharp 55-degree bow entry will slice cleanly through oncoming seas, if the skipper pays attention to speed and trim. Wide chines and lifting strakes damp spray and provide good stability at rest.

The basic center console layout provides plenty of features for both family fun and serious fishing. That seating capacity for 10 includes two on each side of the V-shaped seat in the bow, two on the seat at the front of the console, two on the helm seat, and two on the transom seat. The sides of the bow seat hold receptacles for removable backrests that convert them to forward-facing lounges. The transom seat folds down to clear the cockpit for fishing, and it unlatches easily to open a transom Total Access Hatch. A transommounted arch is available for towing, and a portside door in the transom provides access to the swim platform with folding ladder. A cooler under the forward console seat keeps food and drinks cold. There is more insulated space in the two compartments beneath the bow seat, with dry storage under the sole for bulky items.

The console has space inside for changing clothes and using a portable toilet. Entry for adult males requires turning slightly sideways to back in, but the after end of the port side rail makes an easy handhold for the maneuver.

Inside, there’s plenty of sitting headroom for using the facility, as well as for checking the SportLink Electronics Integration System behind the dash. The standard twin batteries mount on a shelf below the electronics system, with their switch in a small storage compartment on the console’s face just below the helm. Fore-and-aft sunshades are optional, along with a removable bow table.

The Open 232 comes standard with a dash-mounted 9" Garmin multi-function electronic display including chartplotter and fishfinder with thru-hull Airmar transducer in the transom utility compartment, plus a JL marine stereo. An interfaced Garmin VHF is optional, along with a second 9" display and complementary Garmin radar, autopilot, weather receiver, and CHIRP transducer.

Fishing features on our test boat included a 25-gallon livewell with a bottom-mounted pickup in the starboard corner of the transom, three horizontal rod racks with toerails beneath each gunwale, more rod holders in the hardtop April 2021

ABOVE: (LEFT) The bow seats convert to forwardfacing lounges.

(RIGHT) The Open 232 comes with a dash-mounted Garmin electronic display, including chartplotter and fishfinder.

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on boats

and gunwales, and space for a cooler beneath. A Yeti Tundra 65 cooler with slide-out track and a double door tackle compartment, a larger tackle center, or a 30-gallon livewell are alternatives for the aft side of the leaning post. Hardtop-mounted outriggers are available, as are wiring and battery charger for an owner’s choice of bow-mount electric motor.

The Open 232 would adapt easily to virtually any fishery in the Chesapeake, except maybe for the skinniest water in Tangier Sound or the Poquoson Flats.

Sportsman builds its boats under certification by the National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA), which means that the boats also meet the specifications of the American Boat & Yacht Council. While the company’s proprietary SportTech Advanced Fabrication Process for design and build is “a closely-guarded secret,” construction of our Open 232 test boat

was tight everywhere we looked. Outer surfaces were smooth, with sharp corners on chines and strakes indicating careful work by the lamination crew. In the bow anchor locker, the fit was precise and even between the deck and hull, with methacrylate adhesive providing a chemical weld. Inside the transom’s Total Access Hatch, the layout of wiring, pumps, and thru-hull fittings was neat and readily accessible. The fit between the stringer grid and the hull was tight and again bedded in the powerful grip of methacrylate.

Part of what makes Sportsman Boats operate efficiently is complete vertical integration. Upholstery, T-top and rail pipework, and wiring harnesses are all made in house, with incentives for consistent good work by each craftsperson. The plant in Summerville is at the center of a boatbuilding hub with a strong,

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experienced workforce. So far, Sportsman seems able to attract and retain some of the best people.

Another trademark is customer service.

The company consistently wins Customer Satisfaction Index awards from NMMA by paying attention to its customers and dealers while constantly seeking to improve its boats in a highly competitive industry. Our conversations with owners and dealers affirm those credentials.

Oyster Cove’s Internet price for our Open 232 CC test boat is $74,000. The pricing section of the company’s website, sportsmanboatsmfg.com, lists the full range of factory options for all Sportsman models.

CBM Editor at Large, educator, guide, and author of three quintessential Chesapeake Bay books, John Page Williams was named a Maryland Admiral of the Bay in 2013.

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BOATS NOT TO T MISS

he boating renaissance that began in the age of social distancing is still going strong on the Chesapeake this season. New boat buyers are taking the plunge into ownership, current owners are using their boats more often, and some are itching to upgrade. Spring is here, boating season in sight, and demand remains high in the new and preowned boat markets.

So, what should you be looking at? Here are the best of 2021’s new debuts, full of innovation and tailor-made for playing on the Bay.

SPORTSMAN OPEN 302 The Sportsman Open 302 features versatile convertible seating in the bow for family comfort, plus all the amenities you need for a full day of fishing offshore. Twin 300hp Yamaha outboards propel the displacement hull with its generous 10' 4" beam and shallow 22" draft for a smooth, dry ride. The 295-gallon gas tank provides the range needed to get out to the canyons and back and then some. The standard SportLink Electronics integration combines the Garmin electronic systems (for an easy-to-use command center) and an integrated flush “glass helm” dash, all protected by the oversized hardtop and integrated temperedglass vented windshield. There’s a spacious enclosed head inside the console with a freshwater marine toilet, shower and sink.

The bank of four batteries has been placed underneath the leaning post, centering the weight and allowing easy access. The self-bailing cockpit features a fold-down transom seat, tackle storage and bait-prep station, and not just one side entry door, but a door on each side.

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April 2021

GRAND GOLDEN LINE G850 Grand Golden Line Inflatable Boats’ G850 offshore rigid-hull has been rated for safe handling in Force 8 winds and 12-foot waves. The design allows for a twin-engine setup, but also handles well with a single 300hp outboard. The 80-gallon fuel tank provides plenty of range. At 27' 11", the unique deep-V fiberglass hull with its transom extensions reduces wetted surface area and offers improved performance, stability, and buoyancy, and a load capacity of up to 12 passengers. The G850 comes standard with heavy-duty Hypalon tubes. The steering console features a front-lifting seat, and there’s a spacious sun pad in the bow.

The self-bailing cockpit features a wrap-around aft seat with two side lockers, soft cushions, and high seat back. There are two rear waterski towing eyes, two swimming platforms, and a waterski towing arch, making the G850 an ideal choice for any waterborne sports.

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BOSTON WHALER 325 CONQUEST Boston Whaler’s new 325 Conquest has a split personality. It’s just as much a cabin cruiser as it is an offshore sportfisher. Whaler has redesigned the hull of the Conquest to deliver smooth, seamless performance with better planing and stability. The cabin includes a dining area that converts into a double V-berth, a full-height hanging locker, fully functional galley station, an enclosed head and shower, overhead rod storage, and deckhouse windows for plenty of natural light. A spacious bow sun lounge includes handrails for added safety. Fishing features include a well-equipped prep center, indeck fish boxes and an insulated livewell. The starboard dive door lets anglers drag large catches on deck more easily, while a removable swim ladder enables easier re-boarding after swimming. Dual 300hp Mercury Verado engines with optional Joystick Piloting provide impressive power and precision.

An optional Seakeeper gyro-stabilizing system is available.

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April 2021

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GRADY-WHITE EXPRESS 330

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The Grady-White Express 330 delivers on cruising comfort as well as offshore saltwater fishing performance. Powered by twin 300hp Yamaha four-stroke outboards, the standard SeaV² variable deadrise hull, with its Carolina-flared bow, can reach a top speed of 44.6 mph at 6,000 rpm. It burns 24 gph at the optimum cruise speed of 29.9 mph for a range of more than 300 miles. The self-bailing cockpit features a folddown transom seat and plenty of storage, plus fish boxes and bait wells, not to mention a generous 52-quart cooler underneath the port helm seat. It’s a step up onto the helm deck, protected by a fiberglass hard-top. The high windshield provides good visibility. The starboard helm station features Helm Master EX Digital Electric Steering. There’s plenty of comfortable seating and a galley with sink and stove. Step below to the private forward berth with an enclosed head and shower. There’s even another double berth aft. An optional Seakeeper gyro-stabilizing system is available.

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SOLACE 345 Solace is a new company based in Florida. The most innovative feature of the Solace 345 is the patented “FishThru” transom design that extends the cockpit a full five feet aft between the two outboards, which are mounted on the far corners. The extension sits above the waterline and even has a recessed swim platform that extends even further from a slot at the push of a button. Powered by twin Yamaha 425 XTO outboards, the deep-V hull has been clocked at 55 mph at 5,700 rpm. At a cruising speed of 33.5 mph, running at 4,000 rpm, the motors can get about one mpg. The helm station’s clean, 53-inch-wide dash has plenty of room to flush-mount twin Garmin GPSMAP 8613 multifunction displays and other electronics. A cabin underneath the console boasts 77 inches of headroom with a vanity, an illuminated glass vessel sink, an electric-flush marine toilet, a settee that converts to a berth, and a microwave, all cooled by a 6,000 btu air-conditioning system.

The 34 LX luxury crossover provides comfortable bowrider seating accessed via a centerline pass-through between the helm seat and the rotating companion seat. The spacious cockpit features a galley station and unique aft seats that can face forward or back and can be transformed into chaise lounges or sun pads. The helm deck is protected by a molded fiberglass hardtop that covers the full beam and a curved tempered glass windshield. There’s a spacious private head underneath the port console. The starboard helm station features integrated electronics and a Garmin marine navigation system to control the twin Yamaha or Mercury outboards. Twin Mercury V-8 Verado 300s can run the boat at a fast 36.6 mph at 5,000 rpm, burning 34.2 gallons per minute for a range of 193 miles on the 200-gallon fuel tank.

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April 2021

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Boat Towing

What all boaters should know as they head back on the water

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s to r y & ph oto s by

Kate Livie

P H OT O b y j ay f l e m i n g

Eel pots, with funnels trapping the eels inside, haven’t changed in centuries.

I

t’s well before sunrise on a late November morning in Kent County, Md., and the skies have opened. My headlights are weak pinpoints in the almost biblical rain, which swallows any landmarks on my drive to the Turner’s Creek landing. I pull into the landing’s dark lot and sit, drinking the last of my coffee and working up the nerve to step out into the downpour. At 5 a.m., a pickup pulls alongside me and three watermen get out, unfazed by the weather. They start the engine on their workboat and help me aboard. The captain, Owen Clark, says this is going to be a good day to head out; rain this hard is perfect eeling weather.

Today I’m taking part in one of the Chesapeake Bay’s least-known fisheries. It’s also one of its oldest. The American eel (Anguilla rostrata) represents a resource harvested for millenia, first by the Chesapeake’s native populations. Along the shallow headwaters of undammed tributaries like the mighty Susquehanna, Potomac, and James, remnants of their extensive underwater eeling weirs can still be seen. Hundreds have been discovered in satellite imagery—ghostly submerged Vs of stone facing downriver, each built to funnel eels into a single point. There, they could be netted or speared and then smoked for preservation. The importance of eel to the indigenous diet still lingers in our language, too, in native place names like Shamokin (“eel creek”), Pa., or Swatara (“where we feed on eels”) Creek, near Harrisburg.

The European colonists also dined on eels, a familiar and welcome comfort food from home. Jellied eels and eel pie were standards of British cuisine, especially in London, where eels were abundant in the tidal Thames.

The river-oriented homesteads and plantations that colonists established along Chesapeake waterways gave them ample access to the teeming population of American eel. Recipes from this period are remarkably creative, with guidance on how best to pickle, smoke, roll, boil and broil, stew, and collar them. Eel, it turns out, is surprisingly versatile.

The colonists had their own European methods for harvesting eel, using cylindrical woven rush pots with internal funnels to capture and contain the fish. These pots were used in the eel fishery for centuries, and they looked remarkably like the metal versions stacked in the back of Owen Clark’s workboat, Aluminator. The old ways are the best for catching eel, it seems.

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Capt. Owen Clark and the Aluminator go out for eel from early spring to late fall.

Pots are set out on a line and reeled in with the catch.

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Reeling in the pots is a three-person job.

Today, Capt. Clark and his crew, Ashley Elburn and Andy Lloyd, are some of just a handful of eelers still working the Chesapeake. But why? If eel were so central to the Chesapeake cuisine of ages past, why isn’t eel pie a staple of Bay tables today, like crabcakes or oyster stew?

The answer lies in the power of water— to turn the works for grist mills, to spin turbines for hydropower. From the 18th century on, we systematically dammed our Chesapeake waterways to harness their natural energy. Today, the Susquehanna River watershed alone has 25 major dams. With each dam constructed, hundreds of thousands of immature eel were blocked from their natural habitat—the salt, brackish, and freshwater tributaries of the East Coast of the United States. Eel don’t always live in the Bay. They spend much of their lives in the Chesapeake but return one winter to the Sargasso Sea, two million square miles of warm water in the North Atlantic between the West Indies and the Azores. There, they mate, reproduce, and die, in a process that has long been a mystery to science.

Their offspring make an epic journey back to the American rivers where they will spend their adult lives, transforming along the way from drifting, leaf-shaped larvae to tiny, transparent glass eels. They continue to grow, developing into four-inch elvers as they reach their inland habitats. Before sexual maturity, they will pass through another stage, as yellow eel, and become nocturnal. After another three or four years, their color burnishes to silver as they complete sexual maturation and begin that long journey back to the Sargasso Sea of their birth.

With their enormous range cut off by increasing dams, the eel population began to rapidly decline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As their numbers became scarce, other seafood such as crabs, oysters, salmon, and tuna were readily available in any season thanks to the rise of industrial canning. The demand for eels declined, though there was still a small fishery. No longer sought after as a food fish, eel were still valuable as bait. Salted and cut into small chunks, eel became the preferred bait of the crabbing industry, which boomed in the 20th century.

This is how I first met eel—in the late 1980s, on a picnic table while baiting the trotline with my father in preparation for crabbing the next day. And it was how Capt. Clark got his start as a boy, helping his uncle, who caught eel out of Rock Hall mostly for the crab bait market.

Clark worked steadily through the 1990s, graduated high school, and eventually got a boat of his own. Today, he’s one of only a few eelers in Maryland (there’s another out of Rock Hall, and a couple in Kent Island). It’s a seasonal market, from early spring to late fall. Large silver eels can bring $2.50 to $3 per pound, and Clark will fish 250 pots today, 500 pots per day in summer. He’s hoping each pot nets a pound of eel; that’s the minimum he needs to catch to cover the cost of his crew, his gear, and his gas.

Anything over that is gravy—money for his pocket and his family.

Clark keeps the Aluminator at Turner’s Creek on the Sassafras to gain access to his favorite fishing grounds, in the Elk and Bohemia Rivers. As the rain lifts, the four of us keep warm in the cabin while Clark navigates through the chop. We’re headed for a spot just below the Turkey Point light, where the Susquehanna Flats meet the mouth of the Elk River. Here, another waterman has set a catfishing trap, and Clark has an arrangement to set his eel pots alongside. Eel are attracted to the smell of the baited traps, which Clark hopes gives him an advantage.

Clark starts winching in the eel pots on a long line, lit by a bright spotlight. This is a three-man process, with Clark bringing the pots up and handing them over to Elburn. Elburn sorts the catch, dumping the contents of the pots (a few eel, a lot of small bycatch) into a basket over a live well. The eel, sinuous and eager to get free, slither through holes in the basket into the well, and the bycatch—perch, catfish, a lot of mud crabs—gets thrown back overboard. Finally, Lloyd takes the empty pot, baits it with a chopped-up chum of horseshoe crabs, and stacks it in the back, ready to be reset.

The day’s catch is not starting out strong.

Large eels are few and far between. “It’s not a good day,” Clark says. “Like my report card used to say—needs improvement.” We leave Turkey Point’s lighthouse shining behind us as we head up the Elk to check the next set of traps. Back in April 2021

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Crewmember Ashley Elburn separates eels and bycatch.

the cabin, Clark offers everyone a snack—his stash is abundant, with lots of options (I stick with classic Toast Chee crackers)—and we start talking about the glory days of eeling in the 1990s.

Long just a bait fish, eel had a brief renaissance in the ’90s as the East Asian markets, particularly in Japan, caught on to the relative cheapness and abundance of American eel. Asian eel was highly valued as a food fish but the native stocks had been heavily depleted.

The Japanese demand for exported American eel, largely for use in sushi, created a mini-boom for the eel fishery. It also raised prices on American eel as a bait fish, forcing the crabbing industry to rely on cheaper alternatives like bull’s lips and razor clams.

The boom didn’t last. By the 2000s, the Japanese had developed an aquaculture process to raise elvers in captivity to mature size. Glass eels for export and finishing to adulthood were in hot demand, but as they are protected in most states along the East Coast (Maine and South Carolina are the two exceptions), the eel

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gold rush was effectively finished for watermen like Clark. Today, there’s not a strong U.S. food market for mature eel; confoundingly, those same American glass eel exported to East Asia aquaculture firms are usually then re-exported back to meet the demand for sushi. So Clark is back to his steady work, seeking the biggest eels he can catch. “All this talk of sushi is making me hungry,” Clark says. He sticks his hand back into the snack bag and rummages around for something to take the edge off.

We strike gold on the Elk River. Each pot is crammed with eel, their pointed heads and curiously observant little eyes dangling from the pots, fins poking out on the other side. The three watermen are a machine: lift, dump, bait, stack, repeat. It’s a damp, cold, blustery day, but they don’t feel it in t-shirts. I add another layer over my foul weather gear.

By 1 p.m., the pots have been checked, the eel added to the full live well, the pots baited and stacked, and we return to the Sassafras. It’s been a good day after all. Clark seems pleased. His wholesaler, Delaware Valley Fish Company, will

Capt. Clark will set 500 pots a day during the summer.

pay $2 per pound of small eels and $3 per pound for large, and there are some behemoths swimming around in the live well. Once at the dock, a truck pulls up alongside Aluminator. The live well contents are pumped into dockside holding tanks, where they’ll be netted up into the truck’s storage containers. The eel—olive, silver, a river of life—flood out in a rush of water. Before I leave, Ashley Elburn kindly offers to let me hold an eel for a picture. “Careful!” he says. “It’ll bite and draw blood!” I take the soft, slimy, surprisingly muscular creature in my hands. It is a remarkable fish, a creature of the night, able to climb over obstacles and breathe through its skin. It thrashes, but doesn’t bite.

Back home, I text Clark to say thank you for the adventure and then crash. When I wake up, shaking off dreams full of eels and cold wind and Toast Chee crackers, I’ve gotten a reply text back.

It’s a photo from the lunch that Clark and his crew treated themselves to after work: sushi. h

The author, with friend.

Kate Livie is a Chesapeake writer, educator, and historian. An Eastern Shore native and current faculty at Washington College’s Center for Environment and Society, Livie’s award-winning book Chesapeake Oysters was published in 2015.

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Klingel’s body of work remains in print 70 years after its debut.

I

n 1951, several nature writers were captivating readers with books that would endure for generations. Rachel Carson opened our eyes to the oceans’ wonders. Thor Heyerdahl thrilled us with his tale of South Seas bravery aboard a log raft. And Gilbert Klingel, a lesser known but no less knowledgeable author, took us where no one else had gone before and lived to tell of it: to the bottom of Chesapeake Bay. Unlike Carson’s The Sea Around Us and Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki, Klingel’s seminal book, The Bay, never cracked the nation’s list of nonfiction bestsellers when it first appeared.

Seven decades later, however, it remains in print, testimony to Klingel as a pioneering (if underappreciated) naturalist and intrepid explorer of his home waters.

Marrying Carson’s scientific rigor and lyrical prose with Heyerdahl’s thirst for adventure, Klingel probed the Chesapeake from above and below. The Bay earned him the prestigious John Burroughs Medal for nature writing in 1953. In reviewing it for The New York Times, Carson praised the “rich imagery and evocative quality” of his writing, grounded, she wrote, in “the endless patience of a true naturalist.”

Klingel’s accolades were fleeting compared with his writing contemporaries, but his legacy endures—all the more remarkable because this

self-described “amateur biologist” never took a post-secondary science course. Or any college instruction. His classroom education ended with high school. Self-taught, he learned about fauna and flora in books and in situ, examining up close Chesapeake waters, beaches, marshes, and islands for most of his 74 years.

On the 70th anniversary of The Bay’s debut, Klingel’s family and admirers are rekindling interest in this insatiably inquisitive naturalist, explorer, boatbuilder, inventor, author, and photographer who died in 1983. An awardwinning 2018 documentary, The Legacy of Gilbert Klingel: Man of Steel by Virginia filmmaker Dave Miller, aired regionally on public television. One of Klingel’s signature steel boats is partially restored and another awaits restoration in Mathews County, Va. Klingel’s daughter, who is president of the Mathews Maritime Foundation and the documentary’s scriptwriter, envisions an extensive exhibit about her father when the foundation finds suitable museum space on or near Gwynn’s Island, Klingel’s favorite place on the Bay and his last home.

Meanwhile, readers can discover much about Klingel’s keen mind, expansive imagination, and exceptional life in The Bay’s 278 pages.

by Marty LeGrand April 2021

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B

orn in Baltimore into an affluent family of pharmaceutical entrepreneurs, Gilbert Clarence Klingel wasn’t destined for either the family trade or for city life. His course was set when he traveled by steamboat with his parents on a vacation to Virginia’s Middle Peninsula. “I discovered Gwynn’s Island here in this great bay-fronting county of Mathews in 1912,” he told the Baltimore Sun in 1964. “I returned as often as I could.”

Staying in Hudgins’ Boardinghouse, the family spent summer getaways enjoying the Bay and Milford Haven, waterways where Gilbert learned to swim and sail and soak in his new surroundings.

“He became acquainted with nature for the first time in his life,” says his daughter, Marcy Benouameur, a Mathews resident. “He fell in love with the area and with the Chesapeake Bay. It was a turning point in his life. Here was a completely different world to him. He was enchanted with it.”

Even the scary parts. One hot August afternoon, he recounts in The Bay, he went swimming, only to be surrounded by dozens of clustered jellyfish when he tried to return. With

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“I struck out, swimming as hard as I could go.

At almost every stroke I ran into a jelly and the pain became maddening. I have spent years about the water in all sorts of circumstances but I never came so close to panic as then.” —CHAPTER 4, “THE GHOST WORLD” Gilbert working in the Bahamas at Field Station Inagua in 1931.

medusae looming everywhere, he swam doggedly through their tentacles, enduring searing stings on his chest, stomach, back, limbs, and face until—exhausted and half drowned—he finally reached shore.

His youthful near-death encounter initially dampened his interest in Dactylometra, the Chesapeake’s dreaded stinging species of jellies.

Later, as he came to view them through a naturalist’s eyes, he found Dactylometra “a graceful and even beautiful creature.” He mentions jellyfish frequently in his book, holding them in awe and respect.

In Baltimore, Klingel joined the Maryland Academy of Sciences at age 10 and became cofounder and a curator of the academy’s offshoot, the Natural History Society of Maryland.

Growing up in the city’s Guilford neighborhood, he availed himself of its institutions of culture and learning: the library at Johns Hopkins University, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Baltimore (now Maryland) Zoo, where he liked to photograph the animals.

In his teens, he set up a makeshift biological lab beside the Magothy River to study its plants and animals.

His mentor was naturalist Edmund

“Doc” Fladung, founder and longtime president of the Natural History Society. An admirer of Charles Darwin, Klingel dreamed of sailing overseas to study native species.

In his 20s, he did just that, traveling to Haiti and then the Bahamas to study, photograph, and collect lizards and other specimens for museum collections. In 1930, he had a 37-foot yawl, the Basilisk, built in Oxford, Md., intended for an 18-month expedition to the Caribbean with a colleague. The boat’s construction and outfitting were financed by New York’s American Museum of Natural History, Maryland’s Natural History Society, and by Klingel’s paternal grandmother, a prominent Baltimore businesswoman. Weeks into the voyage, however, the Basilisk wrecked on a remote Bahamian island, where Klingel, only 22, remained for six months, living in a hut while continuing his research. He later recorded his adventures in his first book, Inagua, published in 1940.

For the rest of his life, Klingel would turn his wanderlust and jeweler’s eye exclusively on “one of the most remarkable bodies of water in the world,” Chesapeake Bay. April 2021

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“Now that the surface was twenty feet above my head and there lay thirty feet of black Bay below, I found that I was beginning to feel a little overawed . . . although many thousands of people in steamers and pleasure yachts had sailed over this very spot, I was the first human being ever to penetrate intimately this particular portion of the earth’s surface.”

—CHAPTER 1, “THE INCREDIBLE CHESAPEAKE.”

H

aving returned to Maryland and married, Klingel continued exploring the Bay, writing for newspapers and nature journals. In 1933, he constructed a rudimentary diving helmet that introduced him to an entirely different Bay, “one of strangeness and unreality.” The helmet—a bronze box weighted with 80 pounds of lead that encased his head and neck like towering shoulder pads—provided him an underwater portal. In this murky world, fleeting creatures slithered over his skin, strange fish peered at him with glowing green eyes, and he became illuminated “by the glow of millions of minute animals excited by my presence.”

But the helmet had drawbacks: Water pressure limited his dives to 30 minutes, he often needed his fingers and toes to hold fast to the seabed, and he was defenseless against jellyfish. Working at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, Klingel improvised a diving bell in 1935, one of two he invented for under-Bay expeditions. (He was close on the heels of William Beebe, who made deep-sea diving history in 1930 in the newly invented Bathysphere.)

For less than $400, Klingel and his

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assistants constructed the Bentharium (as he called it) from a salvaged chemical drum and spare parts. Made of quarter-inch steel and deployed from a barge, it could operate down to 300 feet. Sandbags provided ballast and the chamber’s two occupants breathed fresh air pumped through garden hoses.

Christened with a bottle of Coca-Cola and towed into the Patuxent River for its maiden dive, the Bentharium drew the silent scrutiny of Solomons Islanders, of whom Klingel wrote, “a goodly number were quite certain that before long there would be a first-class drowning.” Aside from initial alarm about the sound of gushing water (actually caused by the propellors of a passing ferry) and severe turbulence churned by a southeaster, the Bentharium’s first voyages proved safe and successful.

In newspaper articles and in his later book, Klingel opened readers’ eyes to the “animate sandwich” that is life beneath the Chesapeake: graceful butterfish, diaphanous jellies, manically dancing marine worms, crimson sponges, and ravenous blue crabs. His first piece for the Baltimore Sun appeared in 1934 and he went on

to write about anything and everything for the paper: snakes, coastal erosion, flamingos, sea squirts, eels, coral reef diving, the evolution of Sinepuxent Bay. “Once, they asked him to write an article about spinach, thinking he couldn’t do it,” his daughter says.

Klingel’s “A Century of Spinach,” about a Baltimore vegetable cannery, appeared in the Sun in 1936.

Meager writing stipends and the Great Depression’s toll on his research funds forced Klingel to find other work. In 1941, with his family living in suburban Baltimore, he took a job with Armco Steel in the city.

“He started at the very bottom as a welder and then worked his way up to the head of the metallurgy department,” says Benouameur. In 1948, in his home workshop, he built his first steel-hulled sailboat, a 30-foot sloop named Thespina. With its construction, Klingel pioneered metal boatbuilding in the Chesapeake.

(25 years later, he wrote the definitive text on the subject, Boatbuilding with Steel.)

Klingel’s national prominence came several years later with publication of The Bay and the opportunity of a lifetime it generated.

Klingel was a self-taught naturalist.

Klingel’s diving boat took him to an undiscovered world under the surface.

The Bentharium, an improvised diving bell with garden hoses for breathing.

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F “It is not always well to reduce thought to cold scientific fact; for metaphor and parable are as much an art of intellect as of literature.”

—CHAPTER 2, “LIFE BEGINS IN THE CHESAPEAKE”

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or decades, Klingel had observed the Chesapeake with childlike wonder and a heron’s fierce patience. In the fall of 1951, publisher Dodd, Mead and Company released The Bay, a collection of his revised, previously published nature essays. In the preface, Klingel explained that his was not a book of Bay history, biology, or seafaring adventure. Instead, he wanted to depict the Bay’s natural essence, “the sleek still calms, the gray fogs, the sparkling lusty northwesters, the goodly smell of the swamps, and the clean feel of the salt air.”

His writing is part naturalist’s, part philosopher’s, and part poet’s, with a dash of dry wit. Having absentmindedly lost his bearings once in the fog, he perceives the origins of life in a water

droplet. He sees finality on a desolate beach where the tide line “is strewn with the wreckage of a multitude of lives.” As adventurous a consumer of nature as an explorer, he likens teredos (shipworms) to the taste of oysters: “If you doubt my word, try one some time.”

He stared nature in the eye. He braved a midsummer squall where “the sky is filled with tortured liquid and screaming air.” He devotes an entire chapter to the 24 consecutive hours he spent observing life in a Patuxent River saltmarsh.

But it was Klingel’s underwater exploits that captured the world’s attention. In 1952, the National Geographic Society asked him to design a diving chamber for a

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: Klingel’s boat shop; a feature in Sunday Sun Magazine 1964 just after his retirement to Gwynn’s Island; Klingel’s Aquascope captures the Bay’s first underwater color photos.

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photographic expedition beneath the Chesapeake. Assisted by his boatbuilding partner, James (Bill) Nahm, he constructed the Aquascope, a more sophisticated version of his previous submersible, equipped with spotlights for nighttime photography. In the summer of 1953, Klingel and magazine photographer Willard Culver descended about 35 feet below Milford Haven to capture the first color images of Chesapeake marine life. “One Hundred Hours Beneath the Chesapeake,” written by Klingel with Culver’s history-making photos, appeared in National Geographic Magazine’s May 1955 issue.

Benouameur, then a teenager, recalls her descent in her father’s “misshapen yellow steel lobster” (his description) off Gwynn’s Island.

“They’d clamp down the cockpit and you’d lay on your stomach on a foam mattress. You could see perfectly well right outside,” she says. “The highlight of my trip was seeing two eels get into a fight right in front of the window.”

She says her father liked the spot he’d carefully chosen for the Aquascope’s dives so much, he relocated his weekend boatbuilding business to Gwynn’s Island. After retiring from Armco in 1963, he made his home there too, building steel boats and writing until lymphoma took his life two decades later.

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by his very efficiency in collecting them; he cannot take and not give; success in one day means failure in another.”

—CHAPTER 17, “COMPENSATION”

O

ne of Klingel’s final writing projects was a companion book to The Bay, an unpublished work devoted to the Potomac River. Titled simply “The River,” it’s a naturalist’s exploration of the Bay’s second largest tributary from its burbling birth on a West Virginia mountainside to its broad, bistate dispersal into the Chesapeake. “He wrote it because he wanted it to be known what the Potomac was like during his lifetime,” Benouameur says. “He knew it wasn’t going to stay the same.”

Urban sprawl, mechanization, pesticide use, water pollution, overfishing, boaters’ preference for power over sail—all dismayed Klingel in later years. For a 1967 re-issue of The Bay, he wrote a more pessimistic introduction, declaring, “In comparison with what it once was, the Chesapeake is in the process of becoming a relative biological desert.”

Addressing a Mathews’ League of Women Voters meeting, he warned, “Man always suffers when he upsets the balance of nature, and he is upsetting it badly.”

Klingel’s underwater exploits may remain unmatched. “With the direction in which water quality—and clarity—has gone . . . it may not be possible to see again what he did,” environmental writer and fellow Burroughs Medal-winner Tom Horton wrote in 1986.

In The Bay, Klingel challenges readers to perceive the Chesapeake differently: listening for “the sibilant swishing of beach grass,” imagining a baby tern emerging “from an oval still cell where nothing changed or moved, to a blinding world of brilliant light,” and observing creatures from their elevation rather than ours. He prostrated all six feet, two inches of himself on the sand to watch fiddler crabs at claw height (“highly unscientific, wholly undignified, yet entertaining,” he concluded).

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“Who besides my father would ever have thought to lie prone on the sand to have his eyes an inch or so above sea level to see the viewpoint of fiddler crabs?” Benouameur says. He was her childhood mentor, the one with whom she caught tadpoles in their backyard creek and who first showed her the stunning phosphorescent microorganisms that lit the water when he rowed their dinghy.

“He gave me the spirit of adventure that he had,” she says (as well as a treasured ring he wore on his Inagua expedition). An anthropologist, she traveled extensively, backpacking through Europe and finishing university graduate studies before marrying and settling in North Africa. There, she had more opportunities to travel in such places as the Algerian Sahara desert.

After her husband died, she returned stateside and worked at the Smithsonian Institution before retiring to her father’s beloved Mathews County.

With his spirit, she kayaked the waters he explored in the last boat he built, Green Heron, a 30-foot, flatbottomed motor-sailer that Klingel modeled after Chinese sampans he saw in a movie. “Whenever I’d go out,” she says, “I’d always have to know what’s around the corner and what’s around the next corner.” Green Heron was found some years ago, abandoned in the woods by a subsequent owner. Mathews Maritime Foundation plans to restore it.

The boat was nicknamed “Creek Crawler.” In it, Klingel found refuge from civilization in the hidden, fragile places he loved. “The swamps,” he said, “are consoling in their calm defiance.”

Copies of The Bay and DVDs of The Legacy of Gilbert Klingel: Man of Steel (including Under the Chesapeake by NOAA diving legend Morgan Wells) are available at mathewsmaritime.com.

Maryland native and award-winning contributor Marty LeGrand writes about nature, the environment, and Chesapeake history.

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Starting

A Historical Hotbed for Baseball Talent

T

he nine counties of Maryland’s Eastern Shore are known for many things—popular beaches and outdoor recreation, picturesque farms, stately towns, and vibrant communities. But there’s a lesser known claim to fame as well: The region has been a breeding ground for elite Major League Baseball talent for more than a century. The Eastern Shore has even produced a trio of legends who have been enshrined in the National Baseball Hall of Fame: Frank “Home Run” Baker, Jimmie Foxx, and Harold Baines.

Here’s a stab at a starting nine (plus the modern flourishes of a designated hitter and a couple of relievers) for the region, which has produced more than three dozen big league ballplayers.

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story by CLAYTON TRUTOR

illustrations by ALEX FINE

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Leading off is Talbot County’s HAROLD BAINES , the most recent denizen of Maryland’s Eastern Shore to be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Inducted in 2019, Baines was one of the greatest prep baseball players in Maryland history, bashing his way to high school All-American honors as a member of the St. Michaels Saints and American Legion Post 70 in Talbot County. Baines was selected first overall in the 1977 amateur draft by the Chicago White Sox. He debuted with the White Sox in 1980 and never looked back, becoming the face of the franchise for the next decade.

Baines became a perennial All-Star over his 22-season career (1980-2001).

He began as a right fielder before evolving into one of baseball’s best designated hitters in the 1990s. Baines became an in-demand bat for hire serving six different franchises. He compiled 2,866 hits (34th all-time). His number has been retired by the White Sox and he earned a World Series ring as a coach on the franchise’s 2005 championship club.

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Known as “Swish” or “Big Bill,” BILL NICHOLSON was one of the 1940’s top power hitters and one of the most beloved players in Chicago Cubs history.

Nicholson was a corn-fed farm boy who grew into a hulking man on his family farm outside of Chestertown. After starring at the local high school and Washington College, Nicholson plied his trade with the Philadelphia Athletics (1936), Chicago Cubs (1939-1948), and Philadelphia Phillies (1949-1953) for 16 seasons. Nicholson led the National League in both home runs and runs batted in during the 1943 and 1944 seasons, finishing third and then second in Most Valuable Player voting. Nicholson earned five bids to the All-Star Game and generally menaced National League pitching en route to 235 career home runs and 948 career runs batted in.

Nicholson was a member of the 1945 National League champion Cubs, the franchise’s most recent pennant until their 2016 victory in the World Series.

DELINO

DESHIELDS JR. has emerged rapidly as one of baseball’s most exciting centerfielders. Born in Easton, DeShields has finished in the top 5 in stolen bases in the American League on three occasions. He has earned a reputation as one of the league’s best defensive outfielders, too—well known for flashing the leather and also for gunning down runners with his rifle of a right arm. DeShields began his career with the Texas Rangers (2015-2019) but was traded to the Cleveland Indians before the 2020 season. DeShield’s father, Delino DeShields Sr., was born in Seaford, De., and became a standout second baseman for the Montreal Expos and Los Angeles Dodgers during the 1990s. He is widely regarded as one of the best baseball players to come out of the Old Line State.

Elkton’s own BOB JONES had a unique Major League journey. Following his 1967 selection by the Washington Senators in baseball’s amateur draft, Jones was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in the Vietnam War, earning a Bronze Star for his service. After returning to the United States, Jones worked his way through the Texas Rangers’ minor league system and reached the big leagues in 1974. After brief stints with the Rangers (1974-1975) and the California Angels (1976-1977), the first baseman headed to Japan and spent two seasons with the Chunichi Dragons of Nippon Professional Baseball. Jones returned to the Major Leagues in 1981 and spent the next halfdecade platooning at first base and in the outfield for the Texas Rangers (1981, 1983-1986). Following his MLB career, Jones saw great success as a minor league manager. He is the winningest manager in the history of the Texas Rangers’ AAA Oklahoma City RedHawks (2002-2008).

Born in Chestertown and raised in tiny Edesville, RYAN THOMPSON starred at Kent County High School and was selected in the 1987 draft by the Toronto Blue Jays. Thompson played in nine Major League seasons between 1992 and 2002. He was one of the National League’s best defensive outfielders while a member of the New York Mets (1992-1995). During the strike-shortened 1994 season, Thompson finished fifth in the National League in fielding percentage for outfielders. In 2000, Thompson was part of the supporting cast that led the New York Yankees to their 26th World Series championship.

This one is a bit of a fudge, as DON originally hails from Cincinnati. But before going on to spend seven decades in big league baseball as a player and manager, Zimmer began his professional career with the Class ‘D’ Cambridge Dodgers of the dearly departed Eastern Shore League (19221949), which produced an abundance of Major League talent despite its lowly status within organized baseball.

Zimmer was a scrappy and versatile middle infielder who parlayed his ingame smarts into managing jobs with the San Diego Padres, Boston Red Sox, Texas Rangers, and Chicago Cubs.

ZIMMER

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Cambridge native DARCY “JAKE” FLOWERS was a scrappy and cerebral middle-infielder during the 1920s and 1930s. Flowers played for the St. Louis Cardinals (1923, 1926, 1931-1932), where he was a member of the Cards’ 1926 and 1931 World Championship clubs. The shortstop-second baseman also spent several seasons with the Brooklyn Robins/Dodgers (1927-1931, 1933) and finished his career with the Cincinnati Reds (1934). Following his playing career, Flowers spent the next quartercentury coaching minor league teams and serving as a bench coach for several Major League teams.

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JOHN FRANKLIN “HOME RUN” “The Beast,” as he was called by the BAKER was the first baseball great to many pitchers that feared him, is emerge from Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

Baker grew up in the tiny town of Trappe, on a farm that had been in the family since Colonial times. He was one of the greatest sluggers of the “dead-ball era,” when large parks, rule changes, and adulterated pitches held back power-hitters, and he led the American League in home runs on four occasions (1911-1914). He earned his nickname during the 1911 World Series, when he hit a pair of home runs and led the Philadelphia Athletics to a six-game triumph over the New York Giants.

Baker played for three World Series champion teams for the A’s (1910, 1911, 1913). Following his retirement in 1922, Baker briefly managed teams in the Eastern Shore League and returned to his hometown of Trappe, where he spent the next four decades serving in a number of capacities in municipal governance. Baker was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955.

undoubtedly the greatest baseball player to ever come from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. JIMMIE FOXX grew up on a farm in Sudlersville in rural northern Queen Anne’s County. He played in 21 Major League seasons (1925-1945), and was one of the greatest players in the history of both the Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox. Foxx was a genuine country hoss, burly and blessed with as powerful arms and legs as anyone in baseball history. He won the American League’s MVP award three times and earned a pair of World Series rings with the A’s. Foxx was the second player in MLB history to hit more than 500 career home runs (he finished with 534). He was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1951 and was ranked baseball’s 15th best player of all time by Sporting News in 1999. Foxx played most of his career at first base, so placing him at catcher is admittedly a bit of a shoehorn, but the fearsome slugger did serve as A’s backup catcher behind the legendary Mickey Cochrane. The town of Sudlersville erected a statue of Foxx in 1997 in a small park on Main Street.

Born in Salisbury, BRUCE HOWARD was ever so briefly one of the American League’s top young pitchers. Howard was a lanky 6’2” fire-baller who moved quickly up the Chicago White Sox’s system in the mid-1960s. He joined a robust White Sox pitching staff, which included all-stars such as Gary Peters and Tommy John, but quickly asserted his position within the rotation. Howard earned nine wins in both 1965 and 1966 while posting an impressive 2.30 earned run average in 1966. Arm trouble soon compromised Howard’s burgeoning big league career, which ended after brief stints with the Washington Senators and Baltimore Orioles during the 1968 season. Howard eventually became the elder of a two-generation big league family. His son, David, spent nine seasons as an infielder with the Kansas City Royals and the St. Louis Cardinals during the 1990s.

Current

Baltimore

DWAYNE HENRY ’s baseball odyssey

EVAN

PHILLIPS

began in Elkton and took him to six Major League teams over 11 seasons between 1984 and 1995. Henry’s family relocated to Delaware during his childhood and he starred for Middletown High School, impressing Texas Rangers scouts enough to use a second round pick on him in 1980. Henry spent nearly a decade in the Rangers organization, bouncing between their farm clubs and the majors. In 1989, Henry caught a break when the Rangers traded him to the Atlanta Braves. Atlanta manager Bobby Cox turned Henry into a trusted long reliever. Henry spent the first half of the 1990s as an in-demand long reliever on several Major League teams.

Orioles reliever was born in Salisbury and spent his early childhood in Ocean City before his family relocated to North Carolina. Phillips starred at UNC-Wilmington before being selected by the Atlanta Braves in the 2015 amateur draft. In three MLB seasons, Phillips has shown significant promise as a long reliever for the Braves (2018) and Baltimore Orioles (2019-2020). He possesses a heavy fastball and an array of off-speed pitches. Phillips is the 25th Maryland native to suit up for the O’s.

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When designing a pop-up, we must create a location for the staircase, which affects your existing lower level. It’s important to carefully prioritize all of your desired living spaces so you can decide what rooms and spaces you want on the upper and lower levels. We find many of our clients like to add balconies and roof top decks to embrace their improved views.

The other major item to consider is protecting your existing spaces on the lower level during the process of removing your existing roof and exposing your home to the weather while building the additional level and the new roof. This process is very complex and would not fit in this article. If you are considering adding an addition to your home either out or up, hire someone you can trust, with experience doing these types of projects.

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CBM

wild chesapeake spawning success, has been below the long-term average for too many years.

The roller coaster ride—great years followed by bad years—must stop.

Capt. Chris Newsome, voted Virginia’s Best Guide in CBM’s 2020 Best of the Bay, has a thriving guide service largely thanks to his dedication to fisheries conservation.

Bluefish—This excellent gamefish also faces an uphill battle to rebuild its stock, despite recent changes made to lower creel limits coastwide. Allocation between commercial and recreational interests should also be on our radar.

Learning to Let Go

by Capt. Chris D. Dollar

Speckled Trout—Not much is known

L

et’s get one thing straight: I like to eat fish as much as the next guy, probably more so. Fried fish, smoked fish, grilled fish, baked fish, I love ’em all. Having said that, because I’m also an ardent conservationist and must avoid gluttonous behavior, in recent years I’ve curtailed my intake of at-risk species such as stripers and bluefish in favor of more abundant and invasive species, like blue catfish and snakeheads.

Which leads me to an encouraging trend we’ve seen in recent years in many coastal states: Anglers, guides, and charter captains are taking matters into their own hands by setting their own catch and creel limits, which are typically more restrictive than the law allows.

COURTESY CAPT. CHRIS NEWSOME/BAYFLYFISHING.COM

FISHERIES FACING CHALLENGES

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Cobia—An influx of cobia in the Chesapeake in recent years has also dramatically increased the number of anglers pursuing them. Although the stock is not overfished nor experiencing overfishing, fishery managers in Virginia and Maryland smartly tightened regulations this year to hopefully avoid any further decline—a prudent decision, considering that cobia populations can enjoy strong years followed by lean ones.

“Ethical behavior is when no one else is

Before I dive into that, here is a brief look at some popular gamefish whose populations benefit when the largest among them are released.

watching—even when

Stripers (rockfish)—Professional

doing the wrong thing

fishery biologists agree that stripers are overfished. Specifically, too many cow (female) stripers are getting hammered from all sectors. The Chesapeake’s young-of-the-year index, a reliable predictor of

doing the right thing

is legal.”

—Aldo Leopold ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com

April 2021

about the status of this wildly popular gamefish because there is no coastwide stock assessment due to their life history and lack of migration.

Which means we should continue to take a conservative approach in managing them, both recreationally and commercially. Trout numbers in the Bay were strong last year, but they are susceptible to cold stuns and red tides. Fortunately, they’re also prolific breeders compared to other marine gamefish.

Weakfish (gray trout)—Weakfish numbers have declined steadily from the early 1980s to now. Reasons why remain a mystery. It’s likely that several factors—bycatch, predation, disease, starvation—are impacting the stock, or perhaps apex predators (stripers, bluefish, tuna, cobia) are consuming more juvenile sea trout because herring and menhaden numbers have dipped.

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Summer Flounder—One of the thornier fish to manage in the past decade, a stock assessment done three years ago determined summer flounder are not overfished nor experiencing overfishing.

However, because their mortality rate is up, and average lengths and weights at age are down, this could mean fewer big flounder in the future.

COURTESY OF TRAVIS LONG

TALKING THE TALK, WALKING THE WALK Sport anglers and professional guides often tell me they’re frustrated that state natural resource agencies and regional and federal fishery managers have not done enough to conserve more fish, and in many cases that’s true.

It is also true that we’ve become much more efficient at catching fish in a very short time. Don’t think that means I want fewer people to go

fishing, but an unintended consequence of galactic leaps in technology, especially electronics, has meant that the learning curve has shrunk incredibly. Today’s fishfinders with side-scan sonar are a perfect example, and with live scope on horizon it is becoming almost unfair.

Part of the solution must consist of anglers taking matters into their own hands—literally—by simply releasing more fish, especially the trophies that are also the breeders. I’m not throwing shade at the anglers who want to keep a fish to eat. This is about setting personal limits in response to slow or ineffective fishery regulations. Below are some excellent examples to follow.

In late August 2020, Captains Tom and Trey Ritter of MarVa Outdoors Guide Service in Virginia Beach area were fishing with a friend when they spotted a beastly cobia. It ate a live bait

Welcome to Southern Maryland!

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and put up an epic fight. Once to the boat they quickly put the tape to it: 63 inches long with a girth of 27 inches.

That fish, which they tagged, revived and released, easily weighed well over 80 pounds.

“It was a fish and a memory of a lifetime,” Captain Trey tells me. “A gentleman congratulated us and said, ‘Fish are your business partner.’ That has stuck with me ever since.” The father-son fishing team promotes conservation by asking clients to release any fish over 50 inches.

For the past 20 years Captain Chris Newsome has built his Bay Fly Fishing guide service into a thriving business based on his belief in fisheries conservation. But the Virginia native and Best Guide winner in CBM’s 2020 Best of the Bay says of the rockfish population decline, “No other state on the East Coast has been hit as hard as

Nick Long and his grandfather Ed caught this pair of bull red drum that they quickly released.

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my home state, and this decline has negatively impacted my business. Each of us needs to take proactive measures to ensure our fish stocks do not become overfished.” He points to stripers as a prime example of anglers and fisheries managers kicking the can down the road “instead of taking small corrective measures 12 years ago when indicators of a declining stock were first evident.”

From Captain Dennis Fleming’s perspective, it is all about managing expectations. Prior to leaving the dock, the Potomac River guide discusses with his clients catch-and-release practices as well as sustainable harvest ethics. (I too have found this to be an excellent strategy because it takes the guesswork out of which fish goes into the cooler and which goes back into the brine.)

“If their expectations don’t fit my light tackle service [philosophy] I may pass on the charter,” Fleming shares.

Adds Captain Walt of Light Tackle Charters out of Crisfield, “If we all release the bigger fish, we’ll have much more reproduction. Interestingly, the slot regulations created years ago for red drum made it illegal to keep the bigger reds. Now look how that has worked out—big trophies in the Bay. Coincidence? I don’t think so.”

Most of the largest fish are also the females. Stripers and speckled trout are two examples. In the case of trout, the majority of fish over 20 inches are female, capable of releasing approximately 20 million eggs annually. These big fish may possess what one might call “survivor genes,” making it even more important to keep them in the gene pool.

To promote this ethic, Release Over 20 (@releaseover20) kicked off several years ago after Eye Strike Fishing co-founder Dave Fladd of South Carolina realized his state would never implement an upper slot for trout. If managers won’t, we will, he thought.

The effort grew lightning fast on social media, rallying recreational anglers to voluntarily release any spotted seatrout and southern flounder over 20 inches, even if the law allows them to keep it.

“The feedback, it’s been incredible,” Fladd tells me. In fact, some of the highest returns come from Virginia Beach, which has enjoyed phenomenal speckled trout fishing the past couple years.

As Fladd puts it, “You can make your own change.”

Capt. Chris Dollar is a fishing guide, tackle shop owner, and all-around Chesapeake outdoorsman with more than 25 years experience in avoiding office work.

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CBM

jody’s log

The Patuxent River boasts not one, but two convenient Mill Creeks in its vicinity.

Mill Creek Magic How to conjure up a Mill Creek just when you need it most. story & photos by Capt. Jody Argo Schroath

H

ang on to your pointy hats, fellow boaters, because I am about to tell you the truth about the Bay’s many Mill Creeks. They are the muggle equivalent of Harry Potter’s Room of Convenience at Hogwarts School of Wizarding. Bear with me here. As you may remember from the Harry Potter books and movies, the Room of Convenience appears only when and where a wizard absolutely needs it. And that’s exactly what Mill Creeks do for the Bay’s muggle mariners.

There is always a convenient Mill Creek when and where we need it.

Let me explain how it works. Let’s say you are headed up the Bay from a trip through the Dismal Swamp—Harry Potter’s Forbidden Forest, so to speak. You pop out of the Elizabeth River at Norfolk and find that the Bay is a lot choppier than you thought it was going to be. Now you need a place to duck in quickly.

Where’s the quickest (and arguably best) place to do that? Mill Creek. This Mill Creek lies directly across Hampton Roads between the Hampton Tunnel entrance and Fort Monroe. It is well-protected, has pretty fair holding, and offers the option of docking at Old Point Comfort Marina. This in turn lets you tie up tight for the night, dine at The Deadrise (which sits atop the marina office), and visit the old fort the next morning before aiming your broomstick north. Magic!

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The second day, let’s say you have a lovely time of it, passing the York River, Mobjack Bay, and then scooting across the Rappahannock River and past the Windmill Point shoal. The day is waning as you approach the Great Wicomico River, with Smith Point and the wide mouth of the Potomac still a good way off. What to do? Why, you head into Mill Creek, of course. It’s the easiest, quickest, and most protected place you can go. This Mill Creek is a lovely, winding Convenience, and possibly one of the finest anchorages on the entire Chesapeake. To get into it, you simply follow the entrance channel for the Great Wicomico as far as the first cutoff south. The channel then zig-zags through a nice, protective spit of sand before opening out into the first of four or five little bays, all of which make perfectly good and roomy anchorages. So even if a lot of other muggles have gotten there first, you’ll still be able to find an anchorage that feels just right. There are no marinas on Mill Creek—that’s part of its charm—but if you want one, you’ll find a good one at Ingram Bay Marina on tiny Towles Creek along that same cutoff. If you’ve got a deep draft, you may want to stick with the anchorage.

After a quiet night, you’re off again, this time heading out around Smith Point and across the mid-Bay battlefield where the Potomac and the Bay meet. After Point Lookout and then Point No Point Light, you avoid the Targets and the San Marco wreck before spotting Hooper Island Light to the east. You are nearly to the Patuxent River when you decide it’s time to think about a good place to stop for the night. You probably know what’s coming next. The most convenient and well-protected place to drop anchor near the Patuxent is Mill Creek, this time in Solomons. See the pattern here?

There’s more. Leaving Solomons the next day, you turn once again north at the mouth of the Patuxent and, after a nice, comfortable day of cruising, you reach the entrance to Annapolis Harbor. If you are headed even further up the Bay, you may not want to fight

the Back Creek or Spa Creek traffic to find a parking place, so instead you continue north across the harbor to enter Whitehall Bay with its lovely view of the Bay Bridge. If the weather is calm, you can anchor here, but if you want better protection, you can conjure up yet another Room of Convenience by making a left turn and following the narrow but short and well-marked channel into Mill Creek. Yup, amazing!

And not only does this particular version of Mill Creek have plenty of anchorages, from Possum Cove at the south end to a very protected spot past the final bend, but it also contains Cantler’s, possibly the Bay’s bestknown crab house.

Now, finally, we’ve run out of magical Mill Creeks on our run up the Bay. Why? My theory is it’s because there are so many easy anchorages the rest of the way north—Swann Creek, Worton Creek, and Still Pond to name

a few—that we don’t need to wish one up. Yes, there’s another Mill Creek way up the Sassafras beyond Georgetown, but it’s shallow and not very useful.

The same could be said for Knitting Mill Creek off Lafayette River in Norfolk and the Mill Creek off the Thorofare behind Jamestown off the James River, as well as the Mill Creek on the Rappahannock just east of the much more useful Locklies Creek.

But there are three other Mill Creeks that have their own kind of magic, and no Mill Creek story would be worthwhile without them. They are not particularly on the way anywhere, but they are well worth a visit all on their own.

Let’s start in the south again, this time with a short trip up the Potomac to the Yeocomico River, the second river in on the Virginia side. Like most of the Northern Neck’s waterways, the Yeocomico River is spiky and

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jody’s log

interesting, with branches and sidecreeks. Its Mill Creek is located along the South Branch, jutting off to the west for about a mile and passing through widely spaced, modest homes, woods, and fields. You’ll find a good anchorage just inside, and an even better one in Drum Cove, which opens through the piney woods on the creek’s north side. If you get weathered in for a few days and want a marina, you’ll find a delightful one at the end of the South Branch at Olverson’s Lodge, where you can also get fuel.

For the second, we’ll come back to the Patuxent River, but instead of turning into Solomons, we’ll continue upriver another two and a half miles to the double entrance of Mill Creek and Cuckold Creek. You can anchor all the way up Cuckold in Spring Cove and be happy with it, but if you turn south at

88

the entrance, you’ll immediately come to one of the most charming and entertaining coves in all of the Chesapeake. Despite its generous size, you’ll find good protection here as well.

After setting the anchor, be sure to launch your dinghy, kayak, or whatever you have that floats and go exploring.

Here you can follow little waterways to hidden coves perfect for a hot weather swim, or you can go ashore at Myrtle Point Park to explore its trails. For dinner, you can dinghy over to Stoney’s Seafood House at Clark’s Landing.

Food is also a major enticement to explore the third of our essential (but not necessarily convenient) Mill Creeks. This one is located about four miles up the Magothy River and also shares an entrance with another creek, in this case Dividing Creek. Our final Mill Creek is very short—only about

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•

half a mile long, not counting the marshy part at the end. You’ll find a small but quiet anchorage in a wide spot in the road, just before the creek shallows out. From there it’s a mere quarter-mile trip back upstream to The Point Crab House and Grill at Ferry Point Marina. It’s a very popular place for very good reason: The food is excellent and the décor ingenious.

So, there it is. The next time you need a place to hide, or simply to have dinner, just wave your binoculars and say the magic words, “Mill Creekio!”

CBM Cruising Editor Jody Argo Schroath, with the help and not infrequent hindrance of ship’s dogs Bindi and Sammy, goes up and down bays, rivers and creeks in search of adventure and stories.

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NEW NEWNAME NAME- -FAMILIAR FAMILIARFACES FACES Jon JonHutchings Hutchings– –jon@yazuyachting.com jon@yazuyachting.com 804-567-0093 804-567-0093 Anne AnneHutchings Hutchings– –anne@yazuyachting.com anne@yazuyachting.com804-567-0092 804-567-0092 17218 17218General GeneralPuller PullerHwy, Hwy,Deltaville DeltavilleVAVA

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CBM

stern lines

Natural Bridge

T

he 215-foot arch is carved through 500 million-year-old limestone by Cedar Creek, a tributary of the James River.

Sacred to the Monacans, a federally recognized tribe which has lived in Virginia for more than 10,000 years, the rock face bears the initials of George Washington, who surveyed the area, and was once owned by Thomas Jefferson. The 1,540acre property offers six miles of hiking trails as well as a reconstruction of an 18thcentury Monacan village. It became Virginia’s 37th state park in 2016. photo by Will Parson/Chesapeake Bay Program

96

ChesapeakeBayMagazine.com

October 2020

Worth the Wait The world never stops turning—and her infinite wonders remain. With a new year and new horizons upon us, we have the chance to make up for everything 2020 was lacking. This is your time—to leave all worries on the dock, let the world dazzle you with her natural beauty once more, and discover a truly unforgettable vacation on the water…

VACATION WITH US AT MOORINGS.COM/CBM | 800.669.6529

DISTINCTIVE. INNOVATIVE. PRACTICAL. ITALIAN LUXURY ITALIAN LUXURY LUXURIOUS. DAY CRUISER DAY CRUISER PRESTIGE 590

PARDO 43 IPS DO 43 IPS

AUTHORIZED DEALER

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PARDO 38 PARDO 38

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NEW

S-LINE

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690 630 590 520 460 420 690S 630S 590S 520S 460S X70

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Learn more online at www.cyc.yachts RGB Values:

CMYK Values: 33/40/66

173/215/222

90/81/45/49

30/3/11/0

| sales@cyc.yachts | 2736 Lighthouse Point Baltimore, MD 21224 0.823.BOAT |410.823.BOAT sales@cyc.yachts | 2736 Lighthouse Point | Baltimore, MD | 21224 RGB Values:

RGB Values: 33/40/66

173/215/222

CMYK Values:

CMYK Values: 33/40/66

173/215/222 90/81/45/49

30/3/11/0

RGB Values: 90/81/45/49

30/3/11/0

33/40