Friday 30 Jan, Fort Point

Another beautiful day, and as I'm still gainfully unemployed, I drove up to SF to try my luck crabbing at Torpedo Pier. I arrived fairly late, around 1 pm, set up my traps, with chicken carcasses spiced up with a little dried anchovy/squid. The traps were fairly quickly attacked, with a nice rock crab as soon as I had returned from the bathroom. Normally I'd throw these back when just over legal size, and especially when female, but it was heavy for its size, and it was the first of the day, so I put it in my bucket to keep me company until I caught something larger. Some passing german tourists looked like they needed camera subjects, so I gave them a starfish which kept them happy snapping for a while, and a brief play with my new found rock friend.

Strangely, there were only a couple of other lines in the water, and for once, the sealions werent patrolling. By the end of the day (4 pm), I had 2 more crabs, 5" red crabs, and had thrown back 2 legal sized Dungeness, as these are illegal inside the bridge. One was lovely and heavy. It was so tempting to shove it under my sweater....

By 4 pm, a sealion was back, and it ripped off my bait cage, a nice dishwasher cage I bought for a buck fifty at goodwill. Bas*ardo! That leaves me with the remains of an old cage on the other trap, which has been through the jaws of other sealions, and is looking decidedly the worse for wear. Anyone know of a Sealion repellent? Reminder to self: Next time, WIRE the cages to the trap; plastic ties arent enough, even 10 of them.

The crabs were all heavy and full when I cooked them; often the rock claws are disappointingly empty and slightly bitter; but this time they were full and sweet. Compared to my Dungeness catch more recently, (which were emaciated), the crabs must have been feeding well lately.

Spider Crab, Spider Crab, does whatever..

Ever catch a spider crab in your trap? They are bright red/purple crabs, with long shiny legs, unlike either Dungeness, Rock or Red crabs. In fact, these are KELP CRABs,(Pugettia Producta) and are vegetarian. So how come they end up in your net? They can mistake your rope for a kelp frond. While these are indeed very tasty crabs, I do not know how legal it is to catch these. Standard rules for non-Dungie crabs, is that they muct be wider than 4" at the widest part of the body; but because of Kelp crabs body shape, this seems unlikely to be attained. I have looked for rules on the california fishing regulations website, but so far, have not found any guidance. Sure wish they fished these commercially though; the crab claws are extremely sweet and attractive on a plate. Sure to draw admiring comments when you have guests over!

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Dungeness Season is Slow

Since the Season opened last November, pickings at Pacifica Pier have tended to be rather thin on the ground. A couple of Dungeness is all most people expect. I was out last week, and I caught 2, and when I got them home and cooked them, there was not that much meat inside them; and what was in the shell was fairly dehydrated looking, as if the crabs had been living on fumes over the past week.

Still, the weather was great, and its always nice to meet interesting new people.

Overall, using hook and line seems to be generally more successful at Pacifica than using traps, because generally the sealions make life difficult as they systematically pry open one trap after another. The seafloor doesnt seem to make life easier either; mostly the bait comes up covered with sand, as if the bottom foot or so is a continual cloud of sand, which cant make it easier for the crabs to find the bait. Last week however, I noticed others were having some luck, and the sealions werent around, so I put down a trap and almost immediately pulled up a keeper. If I had known how thin the meat was, I'd probably have thrown it back, but still it indicated that when the weather is calm, traps do seem to have better luck than when its choppy.

The word on the street is that either an incoming tide or an outgoing tide is fine, either side of high tide slack water; but it seemed that all afternoon, after high tide was past, the fishing was lousy, despite a decent morning. Time to head to the chinese market for my crab dinner methinks.