SEPTEMBER 28,2008
Helen and I decided to take out the boat solo to do some crabbing. It's warm today with just a slight breeze. We decided to go over to the area that our neighbor told us about. I think its near Buoy 1, over toward Hungeryman Cove.
Now for the typical McGrath blunder. While heading out I noticed the boat did not have much power. I was getting a little worried that maybe this is not the day to go out if the motor is acting up. No mater what I tried the boat would not pick up any speed. Then thanks to Captain Helen she brought it too my attention that I forgot to lift the wheels on the boat. See picture below.
These wheels are for transporting the boat over sandy areas so you don’t need a trailer. Works great as long as you lift the wheel up when you’re in the water. Hey, what can I say, so I forgot to lift the wheels. Well just a trial to see if my wife was alert. Right?
We dropped our pots in around 35 feet of water. Worked out good on our first retrieve. We had one legal crab in the pot, which was only in the water for about 15 minutes. The other pot had several crabs, which were all Red Rock crab. They were pretty good size, but we let them go because our sights were on Dungeness crabs. We moved the pot about 200 feet further out in the bay. This was very productive as we caught 3 in this set and all were of legal size, one nice one. When we checked the other pot near the buoy we got 2 more crabs and then retrieved the first trap for 1 more.
I just knew it was a limit of 15 Dungeness crabs for each of us.
And now for my first mistake, which a lesson well learned. If your crabbing and the tide changes too an out going tide, which is extremely swift you better not crab anymore or else their goes your trap. Yep you guessed, it went under. I should have known better since we dropped the buoy over the side it was not floating. Just a little of the top of the float was sticking up.
This is when Helen and I realized the mistake and decided to pull the pots out. Well ,we were OK with one of them and since it had a lot of rope the float was on top. We got that one, but by the time we got back to the first one we set, it was gone. We must have cruised up and down the area for over an hour with no luck. We decided the only way we were going to get the trap back was go back out in the bay during low tide, which was around 5:30 that evening. One of the other crabbers in the area lost one of his pots also. Not a good idea to tempt Davey Jones.
We docked our boat over by the Betty Kay charter boat since it was not worth taking the boat out of the water and later re-launching it.
Our neighbor offered to go out and help me retrieve the pot which was great. He showed me some real good spots to fish for sea bass along the jetty, as well as an excellent crabbing area while we waited for the tide to go out.
We cruised back and forth for over an hour and a half looking for the trap, but the current was still pretty swift. We did spot another buoy while we were cruising that was under about 3 foot of water. This was the one the other crabber lost and he was fortunate that we were able to fetch it for him. Another 30 minutes went by and low and behold we spotted another buoy starting to float. I was thinking it could not be mine, since it was a long way from where I set the trap too begin with. Well low and behold it was ours. We pulled it up and it was covered in sea weed, which I am sure was the big culprit along with the swift tide combination that pulled the buoy under and moved the trap. The real trick I think is to crab during slack tide if possible and maybe just a little before it becomes slack. As long as the current is not strong then no biggie.
Real funny, but while we were crabbing out in the bay we did not catch any female crabs. Now when we were crabbing from the dock it seemed like most of any legal size crabs were female and you have to toss those back.
Well at least we had a great crab dinner today.
Helen and I decided to take out the boat solo to do some crabbing. It's warm today with just a slight breeze. We decided to go over to the area that our neighbor told us about. I think its near Buoy 1, over toward Hungeryman Cove.
Now for the typical McGrath blunder. While heading out I noticed the boat did not have much power. I was getting a little worried that maybe this is not the day to go out if the motor is acting up. No mater what I tried the boat would not pick up any speed. Then thanks to Captain Helen she brought it too my attention that I forgot to lift the wheels on the boat. See picture below.
These wheels are for transporting the boat over sandy areas so you don’t need a trailer. Works great as long as you lift the wheel up when you’re in the water. Hey, what can I say, so I forgot to lift the wheels. Well just a trial to see if my wife was alert. Right?
We dropped our pots in around 35 feet of water. Worked out good on our first retrieve. We had one legal crab in the pot, which was only in the water for about 15 minutes. The other pot had several crabs, which were all Red Rock crab. They were pretty good size, but we let them go because our sights were on Dungeness crabs. We moved the pot about 200 feet further out in the bay. This was very productive as we caught 3 in this set and all were of legal size, one nice one. When we checked the other pot near the buoy we got 2 more crabs and then retrieved the first trap for 1 more.
I just knew it was a limit of 15 Dungeness crabs for each of us.
And now for my first mistake, which a lesson well learned. If your crabbing and the tide changes too an out going tide, which is extremely swift you better not crab anymore or else their goes your trap. Yep you guessed, it went under. I should have known better since we dropped the buoy over the side it was not floating. Just a little of the top of the float was sticking up.
This is when Helen and I realized the mistake and decided to pull the pots out. Well ,we were OK with one of them and since it had a lot of rope the float was on top. We got that one, but by the time we got back to the first one we set, it was gone. We must have cruised up and down the area for over an hour with no luck. We decided the only way we were going to get the trap back was go back out in the bay during low tide, which was around 5:30 that evening. One of the other crabbers in the area lost one of his pots also. Not a good idea to tempt Davey Jones.
We docked our boat over by the Betty Kay charter boat since it was not worth taking the boat out of the water and later re-launching it.
Our neighbor offered to go out and help me retrieve the pot which was great. He showed me some real good spots to fish for sea bass along the jetty, as well as an excellent crabbing area while we waited for the tide to go out.
We cruised back and forth for over an hour and a half looking for the trap, but the current was still pretty swift. We did spot another buoy while we were cruising that was under about 3 foot of water. This was the one the other crabber lost and he was fortunate that we were able to fetch it for him. Another 30 minutes went by and low and behold we spotted another buoy starting to float. I was thinking it could not be mine, since it was a long way from where I set the trap too begin with. Well low and behold it was ours. We pulled it up and it was covered in sea weed, which I am sure was the big culprit along with the swift tide combination that pulled the buoy under and moved the trap. The real trick I think is to crab during slack tide if possible and maybe just a little before it becomes slack. As long as the current is not strong then no biggie.
Real funny, but while we were crabbing out in the bay we did not catch any female crabs. Now when we were crabbing from the dock it seemed like most of any legal size crabs were female and you have to toss those back.
Well at least we had a great crab dinner today.
No comments:
Post a Comment