As of noon today, all boats but one seemed abandoned at the dock at Falmouth. The captain of the Drifter, Kingston, MA, was clearly frustrating, saying, “Well, [the squid] gotta be out there somewhere. They gotta spawn before the fish get here. The fish’ll chop ‘em to bits once they get here. They gotta be spawning out there somewhere. Maybe south of the islands.”

I asked if he was heading out, and he said, “Yeah, I’m gonna make one short drag today, and then I don’t know what.”

To me, getting skunked is like breathing. It’s what I do. To these guys it’s not funny at all, and, with unusual sincerity, I wished him luck as he chugged out of the harbor and headed east.