Anyone Crabbing HMB tomorrow, Monday 11/7/2011, or any day next week?

Chaeki and I had plans but didn't end up making it out for the opener, so I'm itching to get on the water to catch some crab. I've never used pots before, so I'm hoping to find someone who can show me the ropes.

I spearfish and ab dive, and have many videos posted on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/user/JosH4NA1 . I caught one dungee by hand in Mendocino back in April when I was at Van Damme, but I mostly hit up rockfish in Carmel.

Anyways, I quit my job recently so I'm free during the week and would love to hit up HMB since it seems like the closest good crabbing spot for me (I live in the Los Gatos mountains).

I've got a tandem, plus 4 danielson fold-up pots, rope, buoys, weights, and bait jars.

-Josh

I am planning on going Friday if you want to join me.
Jarod

I am planning on going Friday if you want to join me.
Jarod

Cool, I'm not sure I can wait that long, but regardless, I will try to join you on Friday! I'll update this thread as the week goes on. I may go out solo tomorrow.

-Josh

Tuesday Weather makes me drool...slay em fellas!!!

Josh, I'm hoping to head out to HMB with a buddy of mine on Thursday. Although he is an ex-marine and current CO, it'll be his first time on a yak; so I'll be looking after him with careful eyes lol.

I'll keep you posted on the plans as well. If ya go out tomorrow alone, be safe brother

Josh,
Don't know if this will reach u on time but I'm headed to HMB sometime this morning to give it a try n cure my jetlag. Just got back fm KL last night.
CH69.
Danny

Josh,
Don't know if this will reach u on time but I'm headed to HMB sometime this morning to give it a try n cure my jetlag. Just got back fm KL last night.
CH69.
Danny

Hey Danny -

I've still got to finish my rigging and see if I can get the yak loaded on the car solo. I'm not entirely sure i'll make it out today, but if I do, it wont be for another couple hours. I don't have a radio yet but I'll send you a PM with my cell # if I manage to get rolling.

I'll be in a white highlander with an orange pelican tandem, camo farmer-johns with a green jacket.

-Josh

No problem Josh. No hurry.
I'm still prepping my stuff which have been buried for a long while.
I'll bring along a spare radio for ur use just in case u make it.

I'll probably be on my way by 9:30ish.

Danny

It was great meeting you today Danny! I'm glad you came back into the harbor and found me, otherwise I probably would have just stayed behind the breakwaters and missed out on the crabs. I need to pick up a radio, gps, and depth finder ASAP. Thanks for showing me the ropes!

Tally for the day was 2 red rock crabs for me, and 7 dungees for Danny. Danny was kind enough to gift me a dungee which I'm steaming up right now! Yum!

-Josh

Same here Josh, nice meeting u as well. As I've said in the PM, it was more of a search mission on our first try. I would hv given more but friends r waiting for it as soon as I got home.

I was surprised to catch 3 on last 25 min soak near the jetties at 20 fow. I was expecting to catch some rockies b4 heading in but caught them instead.

In summary, it was slow, needs long soak time, but them dungeee are big. 3/7 r seven inchers n rest are sixes.

Hope to see again this Friday.

Danny

I gave it another go yesterday. I met up with Chaeki at 6am at HMBK -  we launched and were dropping pots by 7a. The wind was blowing pretty strongly when we exited the harbor, which made paddling very far pretty difficult. We dropped our pots relatively close to the harbor entrance, then paddled back in, saying 'hi' to HamachiJohn who was paddling out as we pulled in.

Chaeki had to go to work so he headed off to return later to grab his pots. I decided to paddle back out since I had nothing better to do. When I returned back outside the harbor, the wind had completely disappeared and the water was really flat. What a difference from Monday! Since the conditions were so nice, I started pulling up my pots, and moving them around, trying further out. I had pretty good luck with the first set, with a pair of dungees and a red in the first pot, more reds and another dungee in the rest. I picked up a few more as I moved around the flats to close out my limit of dungees, plus 6 red rocks. Over the day I threw back 4 undersize reds and a single undersized Dungee. I was pulling my pots up every hour or so, which is probably too frequent, but I was getting antsy to do something, and I don't have any H&L gear (or knowledge). I think adding a couple hoop nets will make things more interesting in the future.

I went back in to HMBK and started loading up, and chatted with HamachiJohn for a bit when he returned.

It felt pretty good to head home with my first limit of dungees and 16 crabs total!

Since I had dungee straight up on Monday evening, two reds straight up for lunch Tuesday, I decided to make crab sandwiches for dinner last nite. My wife was big on that since it meant she didn't have to do any of the meat picking I just finished eating a thai-style crab omelette for breakfast, and will cook up the rest tonite for guests and leftovers over the next couple of days! Wahoo!

Danny - I don't think I'll be able to make it out again this weekend, but it sounds like fun and I wish I could. Good luck!

-Josh

Wow! What a catch!
Looks like you hit the jack pot! Congrats!
I hope to do some crabbing next season once I get more experiance on my yak!
Maybe then you could teach me the ropes!
Tight lines,

GS