Pitfalls with Pots

Ouch! Sharp salmon teeth cut into my fingers as I tried to thread a line through the jaws of the long dead fish. He was getting his revenge after a few months plotting in the freezer; we had eaten the rest of him for dinner a dozen weeks before and were using his carcass for crab bait.

I started the day with a few puncture holes, and it probably would get worse if I wasn’t careful. Finally, we managed to get the crab pot ready to go overboard. Salmon heads were laced to the wire; the plastic baiter was filled with crushed clams, and we picked a good spot to drop it on the edge of the channel. Over went the pot, down into the 25-foot deep water of the Columbia.

The process was repeated (a little less painfully) over the next few minutes, and half a dozen pots were out, tempting the crabs rushing around in the flooding tide. The tide was coming in faster now, pushing the floats on the end of the lines upriver.

Chasing Dungeness crab is a favorite all along the Pacific Coast. The great tasting crustaceans are nearly everywhere, and can be netted from bridges and piers as well as from small boats. We had picked a bright winter day to head out on the Columbia; the crabs were packed with meat this time of year, and with any luck at all, we’d have our limits of twelve crabs apiece in no time!

My buddy Matt checked out our set. My three red floats joining his three bright yellow ones. Only problem was that he could only find two! One of his yellow floats, and the brand new crab pot attached, were down there somewhere. Houston, we had a problem!

“It’s gone Bob,” Matt wailed. “That pot cost me a hundred bucks!” We frantically retraced our tracks. We drove the boat all along our route, peering into the water, hoping the four feet of visibility would give us a sighting of the bright yellow float. No luck. Then we took a recount. Now one of my floats had gone under. This was a problem; now it was my money going down a salty drain!!

“There it is!” Matt hollered, pointing toward an emerging float, going down again. We raced to the site and got a hook on the float just as it headed back to the deep. Something was wrong, and we quickly pulled our floats and hauled the pots back to the boat. Once the five were accounted for, we gave up, for the time being, on the sixth and looked for calmer water. What had gone wrong?

Like many folks, we had made a common error. Crabbing can be a calm, relaxing sport, but with a ripping tide and a bad pot placement, you are asking for trouble.

We had made two basic mistakes. First, we dropped the pots along a sloped surface. Within about five feet of channel, the water depth had dropped from 25 to 33 feet. So a couple of our pots were in water that was a little too deep. Second, we had underestimated the power of a flooding tide. Like a lot of locals, we knew that the ebb would haul our line underwater, but hadn’t counted on such a strong flood. Fifty feet of line seems like a lot in 33 feet of water, but the extra 17 feet can get pulled under when the tide is racing in either direction.

Boating books recommend that you have three times the line needed on an anchor rope. For instance, if you are planning on holding in 100 feet of water, have at least 300 feet of rope attached. The same holds true for crab pots. You can also help your case by double floating your crab line. A little extra buoyancy will help it keep its “head” above water if you don’t have quite enough line.

After we got our pots out, we went downriver a quarter mile to a little shallower, flatter and calmer spot. I should have gone there in the first place, but I had tried a new spot a little closer and paid the price. I wouldn’t make that mistake again! After a couple of hours of relaxed and fun crabbing, we had our limits and headed back upstream. The flood was slowing down, and we could see Matt’s bright yellow float bobbing in the surf. No problem now, with slack water the float bobbed right to the surface. When we brought the pot up, we had our last laugh, it was empty!! Not only was the spot a pot eater, there weren’t any crabs around to catch.


Bob Ellsberg’s column, Fishin’, appears monthly in RV Life and rvlife.com