A Crabby Morning

Ouch!” My wet pinkies had been assaulted by a dull red critter doing its darnedest to escape down the hatch of my cabin cruiser. If I didn’t catch the little “bug” pretty quickly, it might crawl deep into the bowels of my bilges stinking up the whole boat for the next few fishing seasons. The crab and I scrambled around on the deck for a good three or four minutes, fighting around traps, bait sacks and various gear until I was finally able to get it into a corner, grab it behind the pincers, and toss it overboard.

That was a lot of work for a crustacean that wasn’t even legal to keep! But we had managed to pull up enough of its bigger buddies from the bottom of the Columbia off of the Hammond Marina to fill the better part of our cooler. It had been nip and tuck for a while. My buddy Skip had a bad shoulder and couldn’t help much; I was steering the boat, badly, but someone had to do it, and Skip’s son Matt had to do the majority of the pulling.

All was going well until Matt got a little seasick from hauling and pulling crabs out of the rolling traps sitting on the deck. After he had emptied his body of a few items of chum, he managed to get back to work. His dad and I were showing him no mercy; after all, we needed limits of the yummy scrappers to give us enough for dinner, and to feed the neighbors for a few days.

Good Season
Our first trip of September had proven to be pretty successful. We were a little worried that all the early rains and all the fresh water might have pushed the bugs out into the ocean. The first few pots assured us that there were plenty of big crabs in the river. After we hauled in a few more traps, we found that not only did we have plenty of crabs, but they were in fine shape. Sometimes after they molt their shells, the crabs are pretty light, not having much time to grow into them, but these were heavy, full of sweet crabmeat. Not only were a good number larger than the minimum legal size, a few were approaching seven inches, real lunkers by sport standards.

After the salmon season in the ocean and Big River slows down, you can always get in a few good months of late fall and early winter crabbing on the Northwest coast. Nice Dungeness crabs are found all the way from San Francisco to southern Alaska. Just drop a few pots down, wait for the tide to fully flood, and then haul in your catch. Most states allow about a dozen crabs per angler, which is more than enough for most families. You can only keep males, crabs with narrow belts around their middles. Freeing the females ensures a healthy population.

There are a lot of ways to catch crabs for dinner. In clearer, calmer waters folks sometimes dive and collect the feisty scramblers. There are little snares that can be attached to your fishing line. Put a little bait on them, cast them out, and then pull them in when you feel weight on the line. It’s a little slow, but can work fine when you don’t have better equipment.

By far the most popular and productive methods are to use crab pots or rings. Rings are just circles of netting, supported by heavy rebar type metal with a line attached. Bait is tied to the bottom. Crabs scramble out to these and start eating the bait, and you quickly pull them in while the crabs are still on top. These have to be monitored all the time, pulled in quickly and evenly, but they work just fine.

I like to use crab pots. These are fixed circular traps that have several openings for the crabs to scramble into. These traps are baited, often in a little internal cage, and then lowered to the bottom. A couple of colorful floats attach to your crab line and let you know where your pots are. It’s a good idea to write your name on the floats since dropping them in a hole or an occasional swift tide can pull them under for a while!

Testing Bait
Baits can vary widely. Commercial folks often use clams put in plastic containers with holes to let out the good odors. Since the pots are “soaked” for a while before they get picked up, just a little scent can fill them. With sport pots, most of us only like to wait a few minutes before hauling them up. A rotation of nine rings or pots usually will get from 10 minutes to half an hour of time for the critters to get caught inside. For this faster action, it usually helps to have more substantial bait.

The most popular bait to use is the carcass of cleaned fish. These are exposed nicely for the crabs to get at, they are free or cheap, and they always seem to work well. Lately, my buddies have been using chicken parts put in little plastic cages to attract the hungry Dungeness. These do cost a few bucks, but have a couple of advantages. Unlike a stinky fish carcass, they don’t clog up the freezer, and if you don’t get enough action, you can always eat them after you get home!

Last week we did a test fishery. I used some old cleaned salmon heads and bodies that had been filleted. My buddy Matt used chicken thighs. It was no contest. His pots filled up with twice as many crabs as mine! It’s all a matter of economics; we spend five bucks worth of chicken to get a couple of hundred bucks’ worth of crab!

We’ve been loading up on some smaller “bugs” as well. During the early fall, the Columbia River crawfish move to the piers and inlets to spawn. It takes a few test fisheries to figure out where they are headed, but a few pots can bring in a lot of good eating. Some of these tasty crawlers get a little size too. I’ve had a number of good ones lately whose claws rival the size of a crab! Their bodies get you a chunk of meat about the size of a big shrimp, but most of the fun with either crab or crawdad is shucking the shells, telling stories, and having a few libations to wash down the best seafood you can eat!