Pennsylvania Game News - December 2013 - 25

doubts and worries we had for the line.
Over the course of setting that day, two
more locations revealed ﬁsher tracks,
making for an exciting day of setting
traps. With knowledge that ﬁshers were
deﬁnitely in the immediate area, our
anticipation of the checking traps the
next day grew by the minute. At the
end of the day, our ﬁsher line consisted
of plenty of anchored cubby sets within
water courses at several different locations. Most of the chosen locations had
shown sign in the past, although a few
were set because of promising habitat
or terrain features.
The sheer excitement of coming
into view of a trap set is the reason why
so many continue to pursue this activity. No matter the species, checking
traps to me has always been ﬁlled with
the same excitement I experienced as
a kid on Christmas morning. Whether
the target species is a bobcat or a muskrat, there is a lot more space around
a trap than in it, making each catch
special. Even after catching hundreds
of raccoons in body-gripping traps, the
triumph of seeing a silver-tipped boar
raccoon waiting at the mouth of the
cubby is the same as it was 10 years ago.
On the way to check the line for the
ﬁrst time, my father and I showed the
same excitement as many would for the
ﬁrst day of deer season. Unfortunately,
the amount of sign from the prior day
did not translate into a catch on the
ﬁrst check.
Location after location resulted in
nothing but working sets and check
marks in the log book. As we bounced
from one township road to the next,
ﬁsher trapping was quickly beginning
to remind me of using cable restraints,
as often the end result is looking at a
lot of good sets with no fur in them.
DECEMBER 2013

Finally, at the ninth location, as I
trotted down to the stream to stare at
another couple of empty sets, I spotted
the dark chocolate tail of a ﬁsher protruding from the front of the cubby set.
Although my father has difﬁculty
hearing, my body language was unmistakable, and before he was within
earshot, he knew we had connected.
The remaining snow on the sand bar
showed how early in the morning the
ﬁsher had come upon the set, circled it
once and attempted to enter the front
of the cubby. The ﬁsher was a female
and weighed 5 pounds, 13 ounces. As I
ﬁlled out my tag, I thought about making catching two a reality.
The next day as we ran the line, it
was much of the same as the day before,
with location after location coming
up empty. As the day progressed, the
reality of just how difﬁcult it is to catch
such a nomadic animal during early
winter began to set in. Just as morale
was once again dropping on the ﬁsher
line, the 11th location on the second
check ended our season. Covered in a
skiff of snow, a ﬁsher was in the trap.
My father's ﬁsher was also a female
that weighed 5 pounds, 14 ounces, and
was caught 3 miles from mine. After
ﬁlling out the last tag, we began to
backtrack the line as we picked up the
remaining sets. Interestingly, neither
ﬁsher came from locations where fresh
tracks were spotted.
Although we ran the ﬁsher line just
because we love trapping, after ﬂeshing
and boarding the pelts we received $40
apiece for our efforts. The ﬁsher offers
Keystone State trappers yet another
valuable resource.

25
Pennsylvania Game News - December 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Pennsylvania Game News - December 2013
