About that bay crabbing.

[plumbertom]

Up at 5 AM and on the road to Florence before 7.
Very nice day on the Siuslaw down river from town.
Traps in the water around 8:30 and then fish all along the jetty for rockfish.
Few crabs the first pull and no keepers, so we moved to a different area.
Three more pulls before 2:00 and we did get 14 legal size males.
Tossed back a bunch of undersized crabs and some really big females.
No fish.
Mostly soft crabs with a few hard shells but I was jonesing for fresh crab.
All that effort for a nice day on the water and a Crab sandwich.

 

[rogerdodger]

excellent. did you see any salmon caught? I fished the jaws and bar area Wednesday from my i11s and saw 5 netted (2 nooks, 3 coho). I had 2 nice take-downs, both just in from the bar, that stripped off my herring but didn't hook-up. Lots of small baitfish in the lower river...

 

[GaryP1958]

Fish checker had 1 in the river Thursday when I took out at 2pm, had one take down and let go below the bridge,Wed I heard 3 caught in the river! Heading out now!

 

[plumbertom]

excellent. did you see any salmon caught? I fished the jaws and bar area Wednesday from my i11s and saw 5 netted (2 nooks, 3 coho). I had 2 nice take-downs, both just in from the bar, that stripped off my herring but didn't hook-up. Lots of small baitfish in the lower river...

Not that I saw. plenty of boats on the water, Parking lot was about 3/4 full when we launched. Some going up hill but most seemed to be going down and a few going out.
The way the waves were rolling in I was able to get within 50 yards of the end of the jetties without a lot of concern for breakers rolling over my low freeboard. Yet we still never caught any fish.
While cleaning the crabs I did see some fresh salmon carcases in the waste cans, so someone was getting a fish or two.
And yes, there was a ton of small baitfish in the water along the jetties, but even my smaller plastics that seemed to be a good size and color match didn't entice any takers.

But the main thing was the day on the water.
I been spending too many days in a row cooping myself up here at the house.
I was in serious need of an outing.

 

[rogerdodger]

yesterday was an all-depth halibut day so there were probably a good number of larger boats blasting out of the river for that....

 

[GaryP1958]

6 jumbo crab threw back about 6 more crab gauge broke so I only kept the obvious ones. Across from the townhouses. Metering nooks not a lot of them but there are some in the river!

 

[plumbertom]

HA! my fishing partner dropped our gage overboard yesterday. Nice aluminum one.
Soon as we got back to the launch dock I went up and purchased a plastic one and had him go over all the crabs he had measured against my fish ruler I have riveted to my front deck.
He said only one was a short and tossed back. We did have a couple of nice jumbo size though.

 

[O. mykiss]

Dropped pots at high tide and crabbed the whole outgoing tide Friday. Kept 16 nice crabs for two guys. I prefer to crab incoming but didn’t want to wait until the afternoon. I would say 75% were hard shell, getting better every week it seems

 

[plumbertom]

I prefer the incoming tide for crabbing as well but when it's late afternoon , the drive back to Eugene and then cooking the crabs makes it a long day.
I I'll fish the low change just to get home earlier.

 

[Diamond Lake Charlie]

I used to fish a long time for crabs, but it is a pretty good haul from where I live, got to talking with some people who live there and run a bait shop. Now I only fish the last hour to hour n half of incoming and the hour before the tide starts hauling out. I get just as many and only have to check pots a couple of times. I used to use chicken, now I use the body of a tuna and if I can get it the head. If not I will hit the local fish/meat markets and get the salt water body fish, if I cannot get it for free I will pay for it. Some times I will hit up the local guides if they are cleaning the catches and toss the heads n body. I tried some trout I had one time n got nothing..I don't crab often so I need all the help I can get with bait. My biggest problem is my traps ending up in others boats so I hang around my traps now as I have caught a couple using my traps, got my traps back so I did not pursue anything.

 

[plumbertom]

I'm always concerned about losing traps.
I've lost a couple to current but have yet to have anyone take them.
As far as I'm aware I haven't even had anyone take my catch from my traps.
But that may have more to do with the fact that seldom move beyond sight of where I drop them.
Either would tend to really piss me off and I would pursue whatever action I could get the State Police to take.
I just can't abide a thief.
I try and avoid fish carcass for bait as I've been told in some areas the sea dogs have learned crab traps are an easy meal and they tend to be hard on the traps when the collect their taxes.