Trap Day on Monhegan | Maine Lobstering Tradition

No one goes till everyone goes. That’s the way it’s always been on Trap Day on Monhegan, when the island’s lobstermen first set their traps off the darkened shoreline of one of Maine’s most storied offshore communities. On September’s last day, islanders begin re-enacting old rituals as Monhegan’s fleet of rusted, un-muffled pickup trucks lumber down to the wharf, swaying like ancient beasts under their towering loads of traps, retrieved from cluttered dooryards and beneath spruce trees all around the village. Watching this progression, Sherm Stanley, one of the island’s most experienced captains, dryly remarks, “All the trucks are getting lopsided … like the lobstermen.” Down at the harbor, they stack their lots of 300 wire traps apiece, neatly coiled lines, and color-coded buoys on the congested town wharf. On the wharf, community members, friends, relatives, and visitors get into the swing of Trap Day—literally. As traps are added to the pile, you marvel at how even slightly built men and women carefully use the sinew, bone, and rhythm of their bodies to hoist them into place. The most graceful grab the top of a trap with both hands, roll it up onto their thighs, and then in one swift movement, lift it overhead while snapping their backs forward to pitch it higher. By the end of the day, each lobsterman and his team will have moved about 10 tons of traps three times: from dooryard to pickup, from pickup to wharf, and from wharf to stern, 70 pounds at a time. In the predawn light of the following morning, October 1, each captain and his crew ride uneasily aboard their vessels, waiting for the first faint hint of daybreak, heralding the beginning of a new and much-anticipated season. Then as the gray dawn slowly opens, the radio crackles with Sherm Stanley’s laconic trans-mission: “Let’s go.” Everyone throttles up and leans into the unknown of a new season.