Our 4th of July week camping trip has come and gone. Although the trip was designed around the Marine Area 6 salmon opener we only fished 3 for salmon 3 days and went crabbing 3 times. I’m breaking this report down into two reports, a salmon and a crab report for our trip.

Our crabbing was interesting. Over 3 days on the water we set crab pots both at Dungeness Spit and in Sequim Bay. In the end we weeded through hundreds of female and smaller male dungeness crabs for 5 legal males. We baited the pots with a combination of salmon carcasses and chicken parts and placed them in water 40-90’deep. The crabbing was probably good but every time we let them soak more than a few minutes unattended somebody would pick the pots. Then on the longer soak we had no chance. Our longest soak was about 12 hours and all we had to show for it was empty bait bags and a starfish.

I know that there are a lot of problems in Marine area 8-1 and 8-2 but never expected our pots to get raided out on the peninsula. Our pots are weighted and I mark the pots on my FF as we set them. Typically, we drive right to them when it is time to pull our pots. On this trip many of our pots had been moved from the location we set them at and were empty with empty bait bags. I guess the silver lining is that we got all out pots back.

Crab or no crab crabbing is fun. The crab we did get were large hard-shelled males with lots of meat. We broke the grand kids in with their first crabbing trip, although they were a bit apprehensive about our 8 legged quarry.

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