"We rowed into the first large breach along Woody Boggs marsh on the east side of Upper Mauricetown Reach," wrote Joseph Reeves, Jr. in his book, Maurice River Memories. On that outing in August 1937, Reeves and his father set out with the garden worms to catch eels to use for bait to catch snapper turtles. They also planned to head upriver on the Maurice to "check some chokers" they had put out for snappers. Reeves described chokers as short sections of eel tied in the middle with strong twine. The Reeves set this bait by hanging the choker from stakes they had set into the mud at different places along the Maurice River. (The choker didn't kill the snapper, Reeves wrote, but snared it.)

On that outing, Reeves mentioned that the tide was low, so his father pulled along the shoreline to look for signs of carp. He checked the mud flats. "When the mud flats along the river flood at high tide, carp feed on wild oats," Reeves explained, adding that the carp feed on the seeds that sink into the mud, and as they do so they "blow small depressions in the mud ... These miniature craters become exposed at low tide"  offering a good clue to where the carp were.

Reeves also mentioned Roy Yate's dock, which was a quarter mile upriver from the Mauricetown Bridge. Reeves wrote that the "boathouse and dock could only be reached by water because the riverbank north of the Mauricetown Bridge had been breached about 1933, flooding the access road." Reeves mentioned that the oyster schooner at the dock was the "Ann Yates, Port Norris, NJ.”

Traveling down river a bit further after that successful day in 1937, the father and son team arrived at the Reeves' wharf. It was a day in the life of these watermen, in an era where a living was made on the water.