Re: Who's crabbing tomorrow morning?
Just got home. The guy with the boat we were supposed to go out on chickened out because there was supposed to be a big storm. It was going to be sunny until around 2 and he still didn't want to go. Turned out to be really nice for a while, but it is raining out there now. So, a buddy and I grabbed a few rings/nets and headed out on the jetty like the rest of the folks on opening day. There must have been 200 people on the inside jetty, 20+ kayaks dropping pods, and dozens of boats heading out away from the beach side. It was crazy.
My buddy and I only got 6 keeper dungeness, threw back or gave away a dozen rock crabs, and I only ended up taking home 2 for myself since the wife won't eat crab. It was so crowded, people were falling in, crossing lines, losing nets, and even the Ranger fell in the rocks and cut his hand all up. Some guy jumped in the channel side in his underwear to get his net unstuck. Really stupid as being knocked into the rocks by waves, undertow, and hypothermia were all possibilities. Not worth it for a $17 ring/net. We actually did better than most people around us. I think the most anyone got around us was 3-4 mainly because of the amount of people out there.
If we had gone out on the boat, we would have limited easy with 6-7 pods at 10 dungeness each. Last year in this guy's boat we got 50 for the 5 of us in 3-4 hours. I didn't get any pictures of the jetty, which I should have as it was a madhouse, but here's my two keepers hot out of the pot. We've definitely caught bigger crab before. I've gotten 10-11 inchers before, but these two are only about 7-8 inches wide. Dungeness have a good amount of meat in them though, so it's ok. If we took the boat out, we would have a cooler full of crab just like these. The minimum size is 5 3/4 inches.
