Takin' Two O'Me Hearties Crabbin'

While a couple of my friends were visiting us last summer, they expressed an interest in learning how to catch some crab.  One of them, Coleen, had never even tasted crab before.  Oh man, was she ever in for a delight!!  YUM!!  So....we loaded up our gear, checked the crabbing season dates for our area, obtained the correct licensure, and took them out for a sail...     

 This is Coleen.  She is holding an aged piece of salmon that had been frozen for too many months in a friend's freezer.  'Petrified freezer finds' make the perfect crab bait, because crabs are scavengers and they love meat of any kind, especially fish and chicken.  Coleen put the fillet into a small bait pot, which is then suspended in a larger crab pot.

 

This is Kristi holding the cage (and tasting the goods :) before she tosses it in the water.  The pot has four doors, one on each side, that swing in only one direction; in.  This allows the crab to enter, but not to escape.  Once the leaded lines are securely fastened to the pot, and a half-red half-white bouy is tied to the other end of the line, the pot is ready to toss.

 

 Kristi tosses the cage over while I feed the line out.  We keep letting the line out until we feel it stop, indicating it is on the ocean floor.  After that, I coil the leftover line and knot it together, about 3 feet below the bouy, and toss it all in the water.

 During crabbing season, there are a billion (okay....quite a few) other bouys out there.  So....I devised a way to tell which one is ours.  I bought some duct tape in two bright colors (purple and yellow) and taped a double-width stripe of yellow and a single-width stripe of purple in the center of the yellow, around the center of the bouy.  It works perfectly and I can always see it from afar!!

After dropping however many crab pots we want, we usually go sailing for awhile.  On this particular occasion, we went out for what we like to call a "Sunset Sail" (where we take dinner and drinks, and just sail around until the sun sets).  Sunset Sails are incredibly beautiful and we usually get a spectacular, color-filled sky.  The sun also reflects off the windows on shore, painting them a magnificent golden color, and making them appear as if they are on fire.  On occasion, we are also visited by the local porpoises or seals swirling in the currents surrounding the sailboat.  On this lucky evening, nature blessed us with it all.

When the sun had set, and the sky was dark, we returned to fetch our pots.  Usually we do this in the daylight, but most of the other pots had been removed, which then made ours easier to find. We grabbed our telescoping hook and Tom circled the boat around the bouys while Kristi waited to hook the lines.  She got it on the first try!!

    

 Here's an excited Kristi wanting to see what the pots hold.  She pulls the line up, telling us how difficult it is to retrieve.  The Depth Gauge reads approximately 50 feet, so she has quite a bit of line to go.  She starts squealing with excitement when the pot and its contents come into view.  "There's a whole bunch of them!!" she screams.

    

 Some of them are tiny and they slip through the gridded sides.  One of them even escapes onto the deck near our feet!!  Luckily, Deckhand Chris loves to be in charge of their safe and swift return to the sea.  Kristi then pulls the pot up and over the lifelines and into the cockpit.  We get out our measuring tool and begin to remove one at a time from the cage.  By law, only the males can be kept, and only if they are over a certain size designated by our tool.  The sex of the crab are identified by turning the crab over and checking the markings on their abdomens.  Female crabs have a large round abdomen, while male crabs have a more elongated one.

 Mmmm....Dungeoness Crab....and this one looks like the size of dinner!!

Chris teaches Kristi how to handle them without getting pinched.  When they are turned upside-down like this, they usually slow in their movements.  Finishing up, and even though our pots were full, most of them ended up being female and we only had 3 keepers.  But 3 is good....EATIN'!!

Did Coleen like the taste of crab??  NOPE.  She turned green and ran in the direction of the restroom!!