HMB Crabbing 11/26

Went out today for my very first attempt at kayak crabbing (yeah, I'm a late bloomer).  My crabbing buddy-to-be had a home emergency & I was flying solo, so I took my time getting out of bed.  Hit the water around 10am and peddled out of the harbor with high expectations and a brand new Danielson trap riding behind me.

Conditions were beautiful...the water was flat, barely a breeze and the sun was even shining.  I headed south out of the jetty mouth for maybe 1/2 mile...the area was already dotted with crab buoys, and I found a spot in 40FOW that looked flat on my FF and didn't have any neighboring traps close by.  Grabbed my trap, double-checked that I had the line and buoy hooked up and took the plunge.  Well, the trap did, at least.

I sat around for about five minutes before collecting my first Dungies...no, really.    Apparently the crabbing was really good today...not 5 minutes after dropping my trap a boat full of friendly Filipino guys pulled up practically begging me to take some of their crabs...they were over limit by 10-12.    Being the helpful guy that I am I took 5 off of their hands. 

Not 5 minutes later, another boat full of friendly Vietnamese guys pulled up and started waving me over saying "Crab, crab, come here!"    Having spent so much time yesterday prepping for this trip I really wanted to catch some crabs of my own, so I thanked them but turned down their offer.  I pointed out a small flotilla of 5 kayakers who were chilling about 1/4 mile away and suggested they try them.  They smiled and waved some more, then zoomed that way...I went over later to see if any NCKA'ers were there & found that they'd gifted 7 crabs to the kayakers.  Like I said, crabbing must have been really good. 

BTW, I met one of our lurkers when I went over to say hi...can't recall his NCKA handle, but he's friends with Fuzz and Chuck E. & lives in Santa Cruz.  Nice guy, maybe he'll chime in with their report.  Looked like they were doing well also.

Anyhow, back to my trap.  I'd soaked it for about an hour, so I said "bye" to the other yakkers and headed back to my trap.  Or so I thought.  First lesson: when your GPS has taken a crap and you have no way of marking your trap location, don't paddle off to say hi to other yakkers.     I'd used landmarks to help remember when my trap was, but apparently there's a reason I never made it through the Boy Scouts.  After peddling around for 10 minutes I began to worry...did the tide rise, and did I leave enough slack in the line?  Did my line slip free from the trap?  Am I just stupid?

Fortunately, I was just looking in the wrong area.  I started using my FF to check the depth as I searched, and realized that I needed to head out a bit further.  Voila!  There was my trap.

Enough rambling though...I know you want the fish porn.  Or crab porn, in this case.  One hour soak yielded 8 crabs in the trap, including 3 shorties, 4 legal and a big red that I sent back.  Add that to the 5 that were gifted to me and you'll see that I went home with 9 legal dungies.  (I'm sure that if I'd brought my 2nd trap or even soaked the one I had for another hour I would have come up with more)  In all, a nice first-time crabbing trip. 

Nice going Pete - looked like a lake out there!

WTG on your first crab trip

Right on... I wish I could of been out there! any sunny day over the night! lol

You're just about in the area where we dropped our traps in the night and after an hour soak, that was a good enough bounty especially on a first crab trip.
Congrats.

Congrat on the successful first crabbing trip.  Thanks for the report and pictures Pete.

That was me out there.  Good chatting with you on the water on such a beautiful day.  Big contrast to this morning. 

We did good, with limits for all of us.  Probably one of the best days as far as average size. My limit was all commercial legal and bigger except for one.

Glad you were able to get out for you first time.  You picked the right day for it.

Amadeo

Wtg on bagging your first dungies from the yak

As the saying goes: "It's never too late"

Thanks for sharing your first experience of crab yakking and am happy to hear that others were otw to enjoy that calm day.

Congrats of your first crab outting...what took you so long to get out there?!?!? Great pics...can't wait to see more of your pics in the future. WTG!

That was me out there.  Good chatting with you on the water on such a beautiful day.  Big contrast to this morning. 

We did good, with limits for all of us.  Probably one of the best days as far as average size. My limit was all commercial legal and bigger except for one.

Glad you were able to get out for you first time.  You picked the right day for it.

Amadeo

Nice to meet you Amadeo!  Glad to hear that you guys limited too.  It would have been a nice day either way, but coming home with crab made it even better.   

Nice pull. If i'm not mistaken is that a verm. carcass as bait! Man, now I wish that I had saved some RF carcasses from the season. 

Nice pull. If i'm not mistaken is that a verm. carcass as bait! Man, now I wish that I had saved some RF carcasses from the season. 

Good eye! 

That's an awesome trip Usagi. We are all so fortunate to have so many good friends that are very giving. My last trip at Doran I had only caught three
crabs and the rest was gifted to me as well.

Jedmo

Great crabbing Pete! You picked a good day to go out there.  I've never seen HMB so flat. 

It sure was a beautiful day out there. I saw maybe about 7 or 8 yakkers out there. I could only think that they were NCKAer's. I was on a big boat heading out and we did good. People are saying that the crabbing is the best that it's been in a while. Most if not all the crab we got were commercial grade with a bunch of jumbos in the mix. We got 71 crabs out of 3 traps... so a lot didn't make the ride back with us.

Happy crabbing...

Freddie