![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/heather-thompson-1-v.jpg\")
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By Brian Robbins<\/b><\/p>\n
HARRINGTON, ME \u2013 It was something to watch: a living, breathing version of a well-oiled machine.<\/p>\n
I was doing my best to stay out of the way with my camera as the 36\u2019 Gold Digger made its way through a string of lobster gear.\u00a0 The skipper and the one-person crew were making time: landing, picking, baiting, and setting back the pairs quickly and smoothly.<\/p>\n
You know when somebody\u2019s putting on a show for your sake; not these two.\u00a0 There was no slatting, slamming, or thrashing \u2026 just fast and easy movements that come from years of experience.<\/p>\n
I made my way from the top of the trunk down the off side of the wheelhouse and dropped down onto the deck just as the Gold Digger\u2019s skipper threw the 36-footer\u2019s 675-horse Scania into gear, glancing at the bottom machine.<\/p>\n
Heather Thompson then looked aft and gave Hilary Oliver a quick nod: Hilary set the first trap back and spun around, snatching her bander up with one hand and a lobster with the other.\u00a0 Heather set the second trap, nudging the helm to swing Gold Digger towards the next buoy.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right: I was watching two sisters do what they\u2019ve been doing together for years \u2013 and do it flawlessly.<\/p>\n
Early lessons<\/b><\/p>\n
Heather Thompson\u2019s lobstering career began the summer that she was 10: she was the sternman for her dad, Gary Strout, aboard his 36\u2019 Jonesporter Triple H (named for Heather, Hilary, and their younger sister Holly).<\/p>\n
She admits to wanting to be just about anywhere other than aboard a boat at times, but, she says, \u201cWhat was I going to do?\u00a0 He needed me there.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she wasn\u2019t in school, Heather learned the cycles of lobstering seasons first-hand \u2013 from gathering sinking rocks in the spring for setting out dry wooden gear to scraping the barnacles off the laths of those same traps the following winter.\u00a0 And each summer was spent in the stern of the Triple H.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was always just my father and me,\u201d she says.\u00a0 \u201cHe had someone that went with him once I went back to school in the fall, but that was my summer job through high school.\u201d<\/p>\n
As busy as she was, Heather somehow found enough time during her freshman year to get to know…<\/p>\n
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\nOCTOBER\u00a02017 issue of\u00a0Commercial Fisheries News.![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fish-news.com\/cfn\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/CFN-10-17-cover-243x300.jpg\")
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