Sealion Menace

I havent been crab fishing in quite a while, so this blog has atrophied. But I thought I'd just share some ideas on the menace posed by sealions.

First, its a privilege to see these wonderful mammals while we are fishing. Many people only get to see these creatures in the zoo, if at all. We get to interact with them in their natural environment.

That said, it can be dispiriting to see a sealion dive down every time you throw a trap in the water to mangle your bail cage and steal the bait.

Tips:
(1) Do not underestimate your enemy. They will rip apart bait cages sold by most fishing stores. They have strong jaws and can mangle solid metalwork.

(2) For bait cages, check out goodwill for old freezer baskets etc.  I then affix these upside down onto the base of the crab trap using as strong plastic ties as you can find. Leave an opening so you can get the bait in and out.

(3) When you bait the cage, close it up with ten more plastic ties. Bring a cutter to open it up again when you need to, and a fistful of ties to reclose.

(4) You could do worse than buying a couple of square meters of wire mest, and bash it into an envelope with at least two layers of mesh per side. It doesnt have to be pretty, it just has to be a pocket.  Nail it shut using 30 plastic ties that also connect to the trap base. Because this is basically flat, its harder for sealions to get their teeth around it.

So remember, next time you go fishing, DON'T FEED THE WILDLIFE :)

Invader crabs

Make sure that if you see these babies, you report them. These are green crabs I photographed in Europe, and they are invading the west coast of America. These are in a bucket, so you can see the size - a few inches across.

Good places to go crabbing in the bay area

I've tried crabbing at Santa Cruz pier, but it was pretty disappointing; There are three good places to go; the Municipal Pier in San Francisco, Torpedo Pier near Fort Point, and, if youre after Dungeness specifically, you need to go to Pacifica Pier: No Dungeness crabs can be caught inside the Golden Gate Bridge. Everything else over 4 inches is fine. That means largely Red Crab and Brown Crab (Either appear to be called "Rock" Crab, depending on who you talk to. The law states that you do not need a fishing license to fish from a public pier, certainly the 3 listed qualify.
The municipal pier is off the end of Van Ness pier. There's a brief Yelp discussion on it, that doesnt say much more than this here.

Update: Because this page has had a few visitors, I'm updating it with some more details on the locations mentioned.


(1) Torpedo Pier, San Francisco.
 This pier (wharf, according to Google) is right under the Golden Gate Bridge, in the Presidio.
It has excellent views of the bridge, Tiburon, Angel Island, Alcatraz and North Beach. To the left, out of picture, is Fort Point, well worth a visit, and to the right, on the edge of the picture, is a nice beach, part of Crissy field. So the wife and kids have plenty to do while you get down to the serious business of catching dinner.
The largest building at the base of the pier is the "Warming Hut", where you can get lunch, sandwiches, coffee, tea, etc., as well as souveniers and reading material. Urination facilities are in another hut nearby.

 Parking is an issue here; the best place to find parking is on the road in front of the huts. However, there are only 4 or 5 spaces here (accessed from Long Ave), so good luck with that; to access the main parking lot, for some insane reason, you have to go back up Long Drive, through the Presidio to access the Crissy Field entrance, and then drive back all the way down to the wharf. That's because some bright genius decided that its far better to have more cars driving all over the place than to allow direct access from the Crissy Field lot (where you see all the cars to the immediate right of the base of Torpedo Pier in the picture) to Fort Point. So you are more likely to get parking by entering through Chrissy Field. But you're going to be lugging your gear a bit further.

Taking Dungeness (market) Crab is illegal here, because it is inside the Golden Gate Bridge. The area is policed, so make sure you throw ALL Dungeness back (personally, I think that this rule should be lifted here; first, because its only a stones throw from the bridge but the next public pier is all the way down in Pacifica, but secondly, because the size limit should cover the bit about letting the young crabs grow up in peace, right?). Having said that, please follow all crab regulations, which are conveniently posted at the base of the pier. A cassette tape box (the black part) makes a great measuring device for the red and rock crabs you are allowed to catch here.

Once you get here, its a great place because the tourists going past remind you what a thrill it is to be able to fish in this place.

(2) Pacifica Municipal Pier.

Its a long walk to the end, where you'll want to be, but food and hot drinks are to be found at the base of the pier, as are public toilets.

Parking is one block south, where you see the cars next to the coast in the picture. If you are missing bait or tackle, there is a shop on the corner, one block back from the beach and one block south of the pier. Sealions are once again in abundance, and you need to be careful to stay away from the pylons supporting the pier because they have huge blocks of mussels at their base that easily trap your lines. So when you throw your gear out, throw it away from the pylons. The surge is strong out here, so make sure your lines dont float back around them. Another thing to remember here is that the pier is high over the water, and the water is deep, so you are going to need a good long rope if you are using traps. I cant remember the exact length, but you need to be thinking 50 feet or so.

At this location, I'd recommend using a fishing rod with the small bait cage with loops that you snag the crabs arms with. Use a good, strong rod with a few ounces of lead to get the bait out. Occasionally, people will come buy selling these for about $5 (or at least they used to), but of course thats probably illegal (as most selling by non-corporations seems to be these days), so I couldnt possibly recommend it *cough*. Also, this area tends to see a lot of enforcement, so make sure that you follow applicable law regarding catch size, maximum take, and so on. This might vary, so you need to check (ask around on the pier), but according to http://cdfgnews.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/california-dungeness-crab-season-to-open-2/?relatedposts_exclude=3774, the maximum number to take is 10, and the minimum size is 5.75 inches across the shell. Please throw back females carrying eggs, regardless of whether its legal.


(3) Santa Cruz.
Parking is a nightmare. If you live here, by all means walk to the pier and try your luck.

Cooking Fish in Seawater a waste of time?

According to a new article in Time, "Michael Mina is even going so far as to poach fish in actual seawater at his Vegas restaurant American Fish. ...Michael Mina is even going so far as to poach fish in actual seawater at his Vegas restaurant American Fish. "
But when I take my crabs home, I take seawater with them to boil them in, because it does, in fact, taste better.

Mussels

Recently, I've been considering taking a leap and buying a fishing license so I can grab some molluscs off the rocks. It seems a bit expensive to clean the coast, especially given the few low tide occasions available per year. Still, at least the catch is guaranteed. Anyone got any pointers?

I'm thinking of going mussel hunting this year, but for that I'll need a fishing license, some good locations for hunting, and patience to wait for low tides. On the plus side, I found a new tide calculator, this one has a nice chart of how high and low the tides get.

So far this year, I havent made it out to Pacifica, although I hear the fishing is good. Instead, I made it to Maxim Market today and bought 2 Dungeness for about $11 - something around $2.50 a pound. One was quite good, with nice brown flesh under the carapace - the kind that hangs together, and isnt soup - and the second was a little lighter inside, but still nowhere near as bad as some I have bought.

"Help me, I'm melting!"

Decided to take the day off an go fishing on Monday, as the Bay Area is sweltering under a heatwave. I spent most of the day in the shade by Torpedo Pier, drinking water.

The fishing was somewhat poor, as I only caught a red, a brown, and a dungie (returned, but too small to feel bad about having done so). Both crabs were reasonably heavy though, and had some decent brown meat. The weather was unbearably hot, and the tide moved from slack to fast incoming while I was there. The red was caught in the slack, the brown just at the beginning of the tide.

Today I have installed a moon-phase calender on the blog, and maybe someday I'll find a tide indicator also.

In the meantime, I'd love to hear from others that are fishing out there; any tips are welcome, also any observations regarding best time to fish, and how it relates to time of day, tide, moon, weather, etc.

Work intrudes on my fishing

Recently, I have been supplementing my income. The pay is enough to buy a new trap and cage, so I'll be able to start replacing the rigs that the sealions have been munching. For some reason, the small traps used with rods dont seem to get attacked - maybe they're just harder to see. One experiment which might work, is to put some of the rod traps in the ring traps. But I suppose the ideal answer is to go to home depot and rig something up myself with chicken wire.

Fishing after storms.

Recently I wrote that I picked up some light crabs after heavy rains; well last week it rained really bad here, yet Thursday I picked up heavy crabs at Fort Point. Go figure! The fishing itself was lousy, because I turned up at low tide, and for the 4 hours I was around, the tide wasnt moving any which way.

The Lazy SeaLion was being as irritating as usual. I really need to construct a heavier kind of trap. I'm thinking some sort of steel cage, covered in finer mesh, which I can bolt directly to the inner ring of the trap. I saw something like a decent base for that in goodwill - regretting now that I didnt pick it up.

A second thought I have is to put a finer mesh also on the trap - see if I can pick up any shrimp.

Apparently there was a sewage spill over at Sausalito - maybe all the crabs were over there!

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.