WHEEL WATCH: Seining summers with Pa

From father to son, lessons aboard the Lucky Star: It’s less about the fish.

Sept. 8, 2026

By Brian Robbins

When I was a kid, I remember often being a little mopey when Labor Day came. 

It was the end of my summer, of course - time to get back to school. I wasn’t so much sad about school starting as I was herring seining ending – for me, anyway.

Not that I was ever an active member of Pa or Uncle James’ seining crews. They went stop-twining for years, which is the kind of seining where you shut off the mouth of a cove with twine to trap a school of herring, then corral the fish into a smaller pocket, drawing the school together so a larger boat – a sardine carrier – could pump them aboard to be transported to a packing plant. (As opposed to purse seiners, who make their sets on bodies of fish off away from the shore.)

By the time I was old enough to actually work, Pa and Uncle James were getting out of the seining business – they were getting older and had had enough. 

I remember more than once hearing Pa say, “I don’t know why anybody’d bother going to that Las Vegas place just to gamble. You can lose all the money you want herring seining ... and at least you can be out on the water while you’re doing it.”

Stephen H. Robbins Sr., or, “Pa” at 71 years old. Photo by Edna Grindle in 1987. “Edna was doing a feature story on him for Commercial Fisheries News, and I remember her telling my brother Stevie and me, “Your father is a perfect 10,” Brian Robbins said. Photo courtesy of Brian Robbins.

My brother Stevie, 14 years older than me, was right in the thick of some of the best and worst of the seining years, with all the requisite long hours and no guarantees of anything.

For me, seining was something that Pa did from sometime in the spring into the fall when the weather started to harden up. The thing was, he (as did Uncle James and many of the crew that went with them) had lobster gear to tend, as well. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve been spent the night looking for fish – come sunup, if you don’t have a shutoff to tend and a carrier to load, you need to come up home, grab a lunch pail, and head down the bay to haul your lobster traps. 

You don’t get any credits on groceries or heating oil or whatever just because you tried really hard and were tired; you had to do something to pay the bills.

It wasn’t until I guess I was old enough to start working myself that I wondered: Just when did Pa sleep all those years?

As a kid, my main contribution to the seining effort during the summers was tagging along when they had a shutoff of fish, making sure I didn’t get in the way and being helpful in whatever way I could be.

But there were also the times that Pa took me out on an overnight adventure: just him and me, staying aboard the seiner Lucky Star that he ran for Colwell Brothers in Stonington, moored in whatever cove they were tending with the stop-twine outfit. 

Looking back, I know now that those were undoubtedly times when the herring weren’t exactly jumping right out of the water. Chances are, Pa probably could’ve taken the night off without feeling like he missed a big shutoff. But we were there, me and him. 

I wish I had a picture of the Lucky Star – although I do in my head.

Built in Canada, she was one side or the other of 40’ or so long, with a raised deck forward and the traditional Canadian step-down in the sheer, in line with the main bulkhead.

She was heavy and she was slow, but she was comfortable. She served Pa, his right-hand man Bob Quinn, and the others who worked with them over the years well. (Uncle James had another seine boat that he ran; if one outfit had a shutoff of fish, the crews would double up wherever the action was.) 

On the nights that I’d go with Pa, Marm would feed us supper, but we ate again aboard the Lucky Star, because, well, that’s what you did. Nothing tastes quite like a macaroni-and-cheese loaf sandwich (slathered with mustard – the fo’c’sle style of French’s that nobody ever quite tightens the lid down on, so it has that rime of deeper-yellow crust around the rim) on Wonder Bread. 

As a kid, having one of those with a slice of rat cheese that had been loosely wrapped in butcher paper (sweaty from the ray of sun shining down on it through the fo’c’sle hatch all afternoon), and a bottle of ginger ale that had been hanging over the side of the Lucky Star in a sack was the greatest meal in the world. 

It’d really make you wonder, as you wiped the mustard from the corners of your mouth, what the poor and unfortunate kids of the world were eating.

I remember rolling into one of the upper bunks (a lower one wasn’t half as thrilling), burrowing into a sleeping bag, and waiting for the best part.

I’d be awake when Pa’s feet hit the fo’c’sle floor. Without a lot of talking, we’d go topside and ease down aboard of the big workhorse outboard – the yawl boat, Pa called it – and once he’d started the motor for me, we’d cast off. 

I didn’t know a whole lot about what was going on, except that you had to be quiet. The old Evinrude was never run above a dead idle for this part; I was on the tiller, and Pa was up in the bow.

He’d have the “feeler stick,” the long pole that was used to feel if there were any fish – and if there were, how big a body of them there was. 

It may sound primitive to some, but I was told by a number of folks who were around at the time that “Old man Steve could tell you how many fish you had within a couple hogshead with his stick,” so I guess it did the job.

Or it did in Pa’s hands, anyway.

Around the cove we’d idle – not a word spoken between us.

I’d focus all of my attention on Pa’s silhouette up in the bow; when he wanted me to bear one way or the other, he’d simply lean his shoulders to that side. All I had to do was keep still and pay attention; Pa would guide me along.

We never found any fish the few times I went with Pa. But that wasn’t the point, as far as I was concerned.

And you know, now that I think about it, I wonder if Pa didn’t feel the same way. 

Pa passed away in May of 1995. Writing that just now, I fetched up: 31 years ago?

I guess one of the reasons it doesn’t seem like it could be that long ago is the simple fact that he’s always with me.

I still ask myself, “How would Pa handle this?” – be it a chore around the house or something much deeper.

I still quote him all the time. It might be something that makes a lot of sense; or it may be something foolish – and even that in itself is worth quite a lot, as life without laughter wouldn’t be much at all, now, would it?

So, even 31 years gone, Pa will never really leave me.

He’s always right up there in the bow. And when I need him to, he just quietly leans one way or the other and guides me along.

—Brian Robbins grew up in Stonington and now lives in Nobleboro, where he writes his monthly column “Wheel Watch” for The Rising Tide.