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Jace Jett, 7, crabs with his father, Jim Jett, on Monroe Bay in Colonial Beach. When Jace was 3 years old, he got his recreational crabbing license and was the youngest in the state to hold a license. He wants to be a waterman.
Jace, a fourth-generation crabber, rests on the dock after returning from an early-morning crabbing with his father, Jim (background). The youngster goes home, takes a bath and then goes back to bed for a couple of hours while his dad heads for his construction job.
Jim Jett (left), Jace Jett, 7, and Nealy Little talk about the morning's haul of blue crabs.
Jace empties a crab pot into the culling bin after pulling it in from Monroe Bay. He and his father fish about 85 pots in the bay, and Jace has named every one of them.
Jace grabs a buoy to haul in a crab pot with his father, Jim. They sell the crabs at the Colonial Beach Fire Station on weekends.
Jace Jett, 7, watches his dad, Jim, cull blue crabs. They throw the little ones back into Monroe Bay in Colonial Beach. |
By CATHY DYSON
Jace Jett is a 7-year-old who's got what the old-timers call a "fever" for working the water.
He caught it young.
Jace was 2 the first time he went out crabbing with his father and 3 when he got his recreational license from the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. An official there said he's probably the youngest person in Virginia to ever get a license.
By age 6, Jace was getting up before the crack of dawn every summer morning his dad went out to fish the waters outside Colonial Beach for crabs.
At 7, Jace enjoys crabbing so much, he tosses mini pots in the backyard swimming pool and puts real ones in the front yard when his father, Jim, is working his other job, construction.
"He just loves it more than anything," said Roger Hill, a Colonial Beach waterman who crabbed for 47 years. "It's just in his blood, I guess. Once you get that fever for crabbing and working the water, it's something that stays with you, you ain't gonna get rid of it."
Jace's heroes are crabbers, and his best friends are grown men who work the water. He doesn't play video games or watch TV, except the Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch."
"When Capt. Phil [Harris] died, it was like a member of our family," Jim Jett said.
Jace, who takes his work on the water seriously, doesn't say a whole lot that's not related to crabbing.
"I like everything about it," he said, quietly. "I get to do stuff, like pull the pots and lift the pots out of the water and shake the crabs out. I like all the different things."
"How about hanging out with your dad?" Jim Jett asked on a recent morning, as the two made their way around Monroe Bay.
"That's one of 'em," Jace answered.
At 4-feet 4-inches, Jace weighs 64 pounds and has such a tiny waist, he has trouble keeping his pants up. He wear suspenders with his "oil slicks," the orange waterproof overalls he wears on the boat, and his sculpted arms stand out against his skinny frame.
"Spring steel and rawhide" is how the Jetts describe him. Other watermen recognize the upper body their livelihood creates.
"Jace is tough," said veteran waterman Nealy Little. "Look at them big muscles on him."
Jim Jett, who loves crabbing just like his grandfathers did before him, doesn't have an onboard winch on his 24-foot Carolina Skiff to pull up the pots. He and Jace do it the old-fashioned way, hand over hand.
It's not so bad in the shallow waters of Monroe Bay, but when they fish in the Pope's Creek area of the Potomac River and have to pull pots against the mighty tide, it's a test of strength.
Jace started pulling pots last summer, and his mother, Marcie, made him stop when he said his back was sore. He and his dad shared the duties recently, but Jace's primary job was to grab the buoys that bobbed in the bay and were attached, by rope, to pots resting on the river bed.
Jace knows all the Jett buoys by their sky-blue color--a shade he picked and then painted on the floating objects himself. He also recognizes the buoys of the other watermen by color--Gatorman's are yellow and Walter's are red--just like he knows an approaching boat by the sound of its motor.
He's given names to the 85 pots his father uses in Monroe Bay. He usually knows which buoys they're attached to, as well.
Jace announced that "Shinyl-Vinyl" was up ahead, and that one of the last pots pulled that morning was "Double-top," so-called because of the extra piece of wire on the top.
He also knows the pots used by "chicken neckers," the watermen's term for recreational fishermen who fish with chicken bait.
Even though Jace has a recreational license, he considers it an insult to be in the same category as chicken neckers, so he fishes under his father's commercial license. Jace would like to get his own pots and rigs in a few years and a commercial license. Because the crab harvest is so lean, the state allows only a certain number of them. There currently are 480 licenses to fish the Potomac River, said Kirby Carpenter of the Potomac River Fisheries Commission, and every one is taken.
For Jace to get one, a retiring crabber would have to sell him his.
Jace doesn't think he'll have any problem becoming a commercial crabber and working the water full time, although his mother says he has another thing coming.
She wants him to go to college and prepare for another career. So do other watermen.
"You want to go to school, do good and and get you a good job," said veteran
He told the boy not to depend on the water for his livelihood, not with the poor quality of the Potomac and the shrinking habitat for crabs.
"But that's what I want to do for life," the 7-year-old said.
"You'd better get that out of your head," Little told him.
Fat chance.
Cathy Dyson: 540/374-5425
Email: cdyson@freelancestar.com
Jace is a fourth-generation Colonial Beach crabber. His father works in building to supplement his income, but says he loves being out on the water so much, he'd do it for free, if necessary.
There have been times he wasn't far from it. This week, many crabs were thrown back because they were under the legal size of 5 inches. His yield was about 10 bushels, compared to 18 in previous weeks.
Jett used to sell his crabs to a seafood buyer, then he and his wife, Marcie, began to cook and sell their own on weekends at Colonial Beach Volunteer Fire Department. It's more work--after he crabs and does construction all week, he then cooks crabs all weekend--but says the pay is better.
Jett tried to get his first son, Jim Jett III, into crabbing, but he went the construction route instead. He has no interest in the water, just like Jim Jett's father, Sonny, who would rather build than fish. Jim Jett III is 26 and the fire chief at Colonial Beach. Jim and Marcie Jett have another son, Jaxton, who will be 2 in October. Jim Jett plans to introduce him to crabbing, too.
Even when the family goes on vacation, to Myrtle Beach, Jace doesn't get away from crabbing. His father, Jim, straps three crab pots to the Nissan Armada and takes them to the beach, where he puts the pots in nearby water. Jace checks them for crabs every few hours.
