On 9/14/2022 7:49 AM, Technobarbarian wrote:
We spent most of the last 3 days on the coast. We came home with 33 crabs. That's a lot of crab, particularly because my wife is allergic to shellfish. It's a good thing for me that she enjoys hanging out on the
dock and catching crabs. I could have caught more, but that is a lot of
crab. I still have to finish up getting some of it packaged to go in the freezer. It feels like the aftermath of a good party. I'm tired from all
the exercise and socializing, and all that is left to do is clean up the mess.
We stayed at the Harbor View Inn and RV park. It's right in the middle of the Garibaldi dock area, which is it's biggest selling point.
It's just a short walk from there to my favorite crabbing dock. The RV
park is the sort of place where all the RVs are jammed together with
small lawns and a wood picnic table. There is minimal landscaping. They
get a lot of big land yachts. There are many nice boats and some real
yachts parked nearby. The inn has been there forever, but it's been
nicely remodeled.
TB
Talk about processing: I had to laugh at myself again. I was a very spoiled kid. I grew up in Newport. After lumber, Dungeness crab was the
biggest cash crop there. It's also one of my favorite foods. These days
it's a mine the miners situation. They make far more money from
recreational crabbers than they would make selling the crabs. That's
probably one of the reasons you can go crabbing all year, while the
commercial season is limited. Recreational crabbing will remain great
until the commercial crabbers hoover up most of the big males. The way
we're doing it, throwing all the females and young males back, the
fishery is probably sustainable forever. I expect that as the sport
becomes more popular they will have to further limit the number of crabs
you can keep. Here the limit is a dozen. In Washington it's 2. OTOH they
have a commercial fishery for Red Rock crabs, while we have a generous
limit.
For a number of reasons recreational crabbing wasn't all that
popular back then. The number of places you could throw a trap in
without a boat was very limited. We got a lot of free crab from my
parent's friends, some of whom had nice live pens in the harbor, and it
wasn't all that expensive in restaurants.
My brother and I had a boat. But, even if you build it yourself
crab traps cost money and we couldn't legally sell the crabs. We could
sell herring for 25 cents a dozen so that was most of our harbor
fishing. Back in those days I did a lot of trout fishing and I was
starting to have......., um, other interests. So I'm a relative new
comer to recreational crabbing from docks. Fishing of all sorts, being
the sort of activity it is you'll read and hear all sorts of bad advice.
I suspect that part of the problem is that most of what you read was
written by people who mostly crab from boats. I've talked to people who
insist that the best time to go crabbing from whatever dock is when the
tide changes to incoming. That's because that's the only time they go
crabbing.
I saw a guy who had dropped 2 traps early in the morning during an
strong outgoing tide and came back 4 hours later. By the time he came
back the tide had changed, but it really wasn't moving all that fast
yet. One trap came back with a few small crabs. His other trap was half
full. I didn't know you could get that many crabs in a standard folding
box trap. The doors have to swing in to let new crabs in. They don't
swing out. He had probably stopped catching crabs when they couldn't
muscle their way in anymore. There are escape holes for the small guys.
He had 19 large crabs and only threw one back because it was a female.
He was done for the day. It was all a legal catch because his wife was
crabbing with him. Depending on their bait everyone was doing well
regardless of the time, but some of us did our best crabbing on an
outgoing tide.
When asked, I have been saying all along that the standard advice
on the tides depends on lot of circumstances. It's probably good advice
for the boaters if for no other reason that that is when they're most
likely to lose traps. Crabs out in exposed areas are more likely to dig
into the muck during a strong tide and wait it out.
Another bit of standard advice is to avoid using fish in your
traps because the seals will sometimes rip them up going after your
bait. Again, this is probably good advice for people who are crabbing
from a boat. A lot of people like to drop their traps while they're out
salmon fishing. Even if they aren't fishing they're probably moving
around tending a number of traps. Seals being seals, it probably happens
at the docks, but I haven't seen it. The worst I've seen was a seal that
moved one of my traps that was baited with the standard advice fresh
chicken, maybe 15 feet. No one has figured out why the crabs like
chicken while the seals don't.
I suspect that the problem for the seals is that it's whole
different game when you're up against someone who is standing right
there with a strong rope and a firm footing, and who doesn't mind
jerking you around a bit. Seals are relatively smart animals. This week
tuna heads were working well. The few seals we saw stayed away from the
docks, but they sometimes swim by for a quick look at what's going on.
I swear. I'm going to get over this hangover and do things that get
me moving around more this week. Since she's a sweetie my wife fixed
dinner. We have chicken with pasta, peas and fresh tomatoes from our
garden. It makes excellent leftovers. I'm planning on more fresh crab
straight from the shell for my late evening snack. I lead a rough life.
lol
TB
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