Crabbing at Astoria

Rock-C · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 11:55 am Post subject: Crabbing at Astoria

Tyboo Mike
I see your on line now. How is the crabbing in the Astoria / Warrenton area? We are going to Tillamook bay tomorrow and was thinking maybe try the Columbia. Have you tried crabbing in your area and can you recommend any spot that has been good?
Thanks

TyBoo · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 12:01 pm Post subject:

Terry -

I don't know about the crabbing, but I hear tell the clamming is still great.

I went crabbing one time year before last. I took the brand new crab pot my daughter had given me for my birthday, tied plenty of new line on it, attached two marker buoys, threw it over, marked the spot on the GPS, and went fishing. I never saw the crab pot again. About a hundred bucks worth of new gear gone. I haven't spent a hundred bucks on crab my whole life! I know the rope was long enough, and I know I was looking in the right spot at low slack, so either it was too light and got washed away, or somebody swiped it.

Rock-C · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 12:10 pm Post subject:

Mike
Guess I'll stay with plan A and try my luck in tillamook. I hear its going to be a balmy 50. Wish I had a Wallas.

TyBoo · Posted: Wed Nov 05, 2003 12:12 pm Post subject:

50 would be nice. It's still freezing in Warrenton. Good luck, and have fun.

Rock-C · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2003 8:04 pm Post subject: Crab fest

I got five crabs on Thursday and we pulled up 17 on Friday. The weather was great, the bay was calm, and the boat handled like a dream. I was by myself on Thursday, trying to run the boat, set and pull rings and avoid all the other boats kept me busy. It was two good days on the water. Going back for more on Friday after Thanksgiving.

Raven · Posted: Sat Nov 08, 2003 10:18 pm Post subject:

Crabbing around bouy 20 was very good today and has been for a few weeks..River I understand was very rough tho..
Raven

Rock-C · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2003 9:42 am Post subject:

OK I'm listening. Bouy 20, are talking the Columbia? I was wondering how the crabing was on the river.

Raven · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2003 10:42 am Post subject:

If you launch in Hammond any place West of there has crabs on the Columbia.Bouys 20 and 22 are red bouys on the south side of the channel..Always put your pots or rings out of the channel for obvious reasons..One of my favorite places is around the lower Desdemona marker in 20' of water..Tide is strong here on the river ,never fish on ebbs or strong floods you'll lose your gear!!The top of high is where it at,that magic hour we call it here..Be carefull you know how cranky the ol river gets here!!
Raven

Rock-C · Posted: Sun Nov 09, 2003 1:49 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the info Raven. On thursday I almost lost a trap to the out-going tide. It got carried around the point and heading for open waters, along with a few others.

Redƒox · Guest

TyBoo wrote:

I know the rope was long enough, and I know I was looking in the right spot at low slack, so either it was too light and got washed away, or somebody swiped it.

There are two types of Pirates; good and bad. My guess is... it was pirated by the bad ones. Twisted Evil

It happens all the time in the PWS, I know because my buddy Fred shrimps and crabs a lot out of Whitter and he got to the point of almost never leaving sight of his pots on the weekends!

I'll add that was in a 15 mile radius of the city, most weekend warriors don't travel farther than 30 miles out. Fortunately!

Mr. Fisherman · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003 1:00 am Post subject: Crabbing Fri, 11-28-03

I am thinking about dragging Sea Lion up to Hammond this Friday to try my luck crabbing.

Anyone else wanna make a day out of it?

B~C · Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2003 8:34 am Post subject:

The chap I work with did a lot commercial fishing in AK, he was telling me some folks experimented with attaching their crab pot floats right to the trap. They use a latch with a release mechanism similiar to that of a self inflating life vest. The rigging is timed so the float pops up about the time they come around to retrieve the trap. Sounds like a good way to thwart bad pirates, and, save props

TyBoo · Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2005 7:44 pm Post subject:

I thought this was interesting. Twenty three million pounds?? That's gonna take a lot of cocktail sauce??

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife
For more information call Brandon Ford 541-867-0300, Ext. 277
Internet: www.dfw.state.or.us

For immediate release Monday, Feb. 7, 2005

Commercial Dungeness crab harvest tops record

NEWPORT – After only nine weeks of fishing, this season’s commercial Dungeness crab harvest in Oregon broke last season’s all-time record catch of 23 million pounds.

“Historically the Dungeness crab fishery harvests about 10 million pounds and we’ve already more than doubled that,” said Cyreis Schmitt, of the Marine Resources Program for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. “With seven months left in the season, we’ve topped last year’s record harvest and that record eclipsed any previous record by more than 5 million pounds.”

Last season’s commercial Dungeness crab landings in Oregon were 23.7 million pounds, Schmitt said. Fish ticket tallies, which lag about a week behind actual landings, were already more than that at 23.9 million pounds on Friday afternoon.

“That’s pretty much off the charts,” said Nick Furman, executive director of the Oregon Dungeness Crab Commission, a non-profit industry marketing organization. “Conventional wisdom would say that this year the landings would be about half. To follow one record year with another record year is phenomenal.”

Commercial crabbing opened along most of the Oregon coast on Dec. 1, but this year’s season had a split opener where fishing on the 30 miles of coast north of Cape Falcon did not start until Jan. 15. In recent years, 80 percent of the commercial landings are in the first eight weeks of the season, which lasts through August 14.

“The price is down a little bit from what it was last year, but that’s to be expected because of the amount of product that’s coming in,” Furman said. Currently the price is $1.40 and $1.50 a pound depending on where you are on the coast. “It did dip to $1.25 for a while mainly because of the amount of product,” he said.

Fortunately the buyers are finding homes for the unexpected bounty. For many years Dungeness crab was one of the West coast’s best kept culinary secrets. But demand is steadily increasing nationwide for this tasty Northwest native.

Furman attributes the bountiful harvest this season with good management and a healthy cycle in the ocean. “The size, sex and season management model seems to be working well for the crab resource,” he said.

“The crabs harvested in any given year hatched three or four years earlier,” Schmitt said. “Conditions over the past few years must have been favorable to crab because a large number of them survived to become adults. By putting back all the females and the undersize (but sexually mature) males we can maintain a healthy population even under less favorable conditions.”

The Dungeness crab fishery is the most valuable single-species fishery in Oregon. The first commercial landings in Oregon were in 1889. Oregon crabbers account for about one fourth of the total commercial Dungeness catch from northern California to Alaska.

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