Hope has about 40 traps in the North River and 75 to 100 in St. Marys River. Today, we’re checking some of the North River traps.

“Everybody thinks a crab is a buzzard,” Hope says, “but it’s not a buzzard, because once food becomes rotten, a crab won’t go near it.” That’s why old bait in the trap is replaced with fresh.

Furthermore, a crab doesn’t like a dirty trap, even if it has food inside. The female crab is more particular than the male. It’s like us human beings, Hope says.

“A woman knows you don’t put a black plastic garbage bag in a white kitchen, but with the man, you’re lucky if there’s a bag in there at all.” Traps covered in debris and invasive grasses — Hope calls them woolly mammoths — will be removed and spray-washed before they’re used again.

Hope guns the skiff through the water, stopping often to check a trap and leaning over to explain something to me, or to just make a comment. I’m sitting on an upside-down bucket.

“The tide comes in and affects where the crabs will be,” he says. “You’ve got to fish for crabs where the crabs are going to be. They’re not going to come looking for the trap.”

Before long, we are zooming past several fishermen in boats anchored at treetops that have fallen over at the shoreline. “They’re trying to catch sheepsheads,” fish that sport human-looking teeth, Hope says. “I don’t fish where other people are fishing. …You know, 10 percent of the people catch 90 percent of the fish. Some people couldn’t catch fish in a bathtub.”

Suddenly, a gust of wind catches my baseball cap just right, and it goes sailing.

“Go ahead,” I say to Hope. “I’ve got a lot of baseball caps.”

We spot a sunken shrimp boat near a grassy area in the river, and Hope has a theory.

“Fishing got bad,” he says. “They probably had insurance.”

And then he points out a spot where a fort would’ve been situated during the War of 1812. It’s a place called Point Peter, located on a peninsula between the North River and Point Peter Creek, which flow into the St. Marys River. The British overtook a smaller American force on the Georgia side of the St. Marys River in early 1815 and occupied Cumberland Island and St. Marys for a few weeks.

“And that’s where they (the Americans) kept horses,” he says, pointing toward the shore. And then he spots a marsh hen, which he calls a “chicken of the sea.”

Hope is constantly looking around and pointing out sites to his underdressed guest. He’s also keeping an eye on his 100-horse Yamaha motor as he steers, making sure the overused water pump is still working. At one point, he steps to the back with a piece of wire to perform surgery on the motor. The operation is successful, and we move on.

Sometimes, he had said back at his house, crabbing can make a crabber crabby. For starters, some people like to steal a few of his crabs to bait their hooks for black drum fish, a bottom-feeder like the carp.

“If you’re going to steal my crabs,” he would tell the thief if he had a chance, “make sure you shut the door back.” All of Hope’s trap floats are white and marked with his assigned number, so no one should get confused about ownership.

Secondly, he says, “dealing with the public makes you crabby, I can tell you right now, because most people want something for nothing. You put your blood, sweat, and tears into it, and somebody wants to give you nothing for what you got.” To make matters worse, he says, state regulations on commercial fishing have become tougher and more unforgiving.

But Hope usually does all right, because he knows who’ll offer the best price for his product. As soon as the North River traps are checked, he’ll leave for Jacksonville, Florida, where he has a wholesale license, and sell his two boxes of crabs — 153 pounds total, not bad for three hours’ work. This time of year, just before spring, only male crabs that are 5 inches wide from tip to tip are harvested. Females are ready to “sponge up,” meaning they’ll carry eggs on the bottom of their shells, and you don’t want to keep them because those eggs will produce next year’s stock.

Hope doesn’t waste any time getting on the road to Jacksonville. Blue crabs are a live market, and he needs to sell them alive.

So this is the life of a Southeast Georgia crabber on rivers that introduce the Atlantic Ocean to the East. Every day is a good day, Gene Hope says, especially good when nothing goes wrong. “I enjoy being on the water, and I enjoy the freedom it gives me,” he says. “I can go to work early and when my day’s done, it’s done. The thing I like about crabbing is I can set my own schedule.”

In the meantime, he’s thinking about another project or two. He’d like to buy an old grain silo, dismantle it, move it somewhere, and put it back together as a circular cabin. And he’d like to get into the pine straw business. “I’m always looking to move from one industry to the next.”

No doubt Forrest Gump and MacGyver would be proud of him.