SOOO MANY CRABS! I could barely lift the pot!

look at this place you guys are no one in the parking lot and this is the scenario where you got your boat out you want to get out on the water there's no wind it's just a perfect day and you might not know how to fish for

crabs

so I'm I'll show you what you need know what you should do on a day that maybe you've never been bothering, so we're going to go through everything step by step and we don't know where they are today. It's been a while since I've been out so we're going to fish from 40 feet up to 145 feet, I think 40 feet 55 70 85 100 115 130 and 145, we'll drop eight pots in 15 foot increments and see where the biggest ones are. crab, let's get in the water, launch the boat, let's start this day, hell yeah, I unhook the safety straps, everything is ready to get on the boat, the only thing holding it to the trailer is the front chain, the safety chain and the belt once we arrive. into the water if it's very low tide, I know I've said this before, but there is a trick I have and this will help you avoid accidents when you are back in a trailer going down a boat ramp full of algae because Many times, when You put the handbrake on right all the time, you actually put it on and those rear wheels are locked, so if the rear wheels come loose your whole car is going to slide into the water, but if you have something to hold all four wheels locked like someone else, but if you do it alone you can't allow someone's foot to have to be on the brake and this will save you a lot of anxiety when you come here at low tide. and there's algae all over the ramp, so here we go.

I'm going to place my buoys on the side of my fenders so I don't scratch the boat and then we'll launch. It's very cold today, so I can choose which side. I want to go out and then I can choose which side I want to put the fenders on and this is how I tie them here, very simple, this way it keeps everything organized, let's take out this buoy, another one here ready to swing, I'm backing the boat and you know when you're really good By backing the trailer you can go down as fast as you want, but that's always a bad idea because the boat's momentum combines with the angle of the ramp once you start.

When you brake, you can run away and that's always a bad idea, so it's okay, I have the boat in the water, it's not too deep, I have the car parked now and this is my little friend, here, this stick, we put the stick on the brake pedal. and we push the lever on the seat, now we have all four wheels locked, we are going to unlock the safety chain back or down, obviously, you want to make sure the drain plug is out, safety chain out of the belt, normally when I'm going back, I like going back. it gets right to where my wheels are in the water or where the boat comes out, it starts coming out fine, you should be able to get the boat out right away and when you're launching a boat, whether you're alone or not, it's always good to get it to the end off the dock that way if anyone else wants to come launch it they can do that too and there's room for them okay let's park the trailer get in I just got in the water our boat is full of stuff and we have about 45 minutes of travel to the place and it is in the afternoon

many

times the wind picks up in the afternoon but the forecast is calm all day, so I put on the life jacket.

I always like to use it if I'm that low. At least that's the new thing I'm trying to do more of. I'm also going to throw out the kill rope. I just come along and enjoy this pleasant walk. It's such a beautiful day. Hopefully we can end the day with some crab too so let's get out there and Start throwing the pots on a nice trip to the fishing spot so I'll let the bait thaw out because it's all still frozen. This is a herring that Keith and I caught in Los Angeles the other day, but all I'm going to do is. just put some water in the bucket and let the bait soak, let it soak for a while, you can buy chicken, you can fish your own bait, we have old rockfish carcasses, works perfectly, defrost them all by the time we get to the crab fishing place. place, they will be ready to put the nets in every area, every port, every marina we will have their own little tricks and tips and all that here in Half Moon Bay, once you leave the mouth, I don't want to turn immediately because there is a very shallow reef, all the white water there is breaking and I have to go around it because I'm going north to Pacifica and that's where we're going to drop our pots, but you know, just keep in mind you can check with the harbor master or just talking to other boaters as well because the guys that are familiar with it coming here will all help you.

I'm sure we made it and we're going to get started. fishing for

crabs

now, check this out, check this out, this is the setup, this is the underwater camera for the crab pot, it has a super wide angle. I'm going to set the bait right now and hopefully we'll get some good pictures of these crabs. I'm going to do that right now. This would be the first to come out. Here is our herring. A bunch of herring should be thawed so you can take a big spoonful. A big handful. I'll put it right here. our mesh bag will probably do about half of this bag and then from a rockfish trip a while ago I saved a bunch of rockfish so I'm going to cut this one up and use the old rockfish too just cutting it like this.

It's got a little bit of a smell to it, well I don't have my knife available so I'm going to poke it with this gaff a few times in the bag so this is my first buoy it's got about 60 feet of line and we're diving to 40 feet of water, you always want a little extra line because with the current it will pull the buoy down and if it's just vertical you'll probably lose things, so I'm going to throw this out. to get ahead throw the buoy overboard take out all the line nice and easy nice and easy there's our herring and when you put them in it's very important to keep them tight you know I figured it out I figured it out with difficulty keep them tight all the way to the bottom, otherwise, The bag floats everywhere and it's much easier for these crabs to get out, so I squeezed them all the way to the bottom, all good, the next one is ready to go, the bait bag is in there tight, it's not going to be floating with the current now we're at 44 feet so we have 10 more feet left that will connect to the pot and this here is our extra spool it's 160 feet but we don't need 160 feet when we're fishing in 55 feet of water so this is our coil, we're not going to fish, this is what we're going to fish and this is going to stick out at the top near the buoy, all I did was wrap it. my arm a few times and then I just wrapped it around the coil so you know, hopefully, hopefully, that works, boom, all right, I learned this from Christian, thanks Christian, for knowing, making this a little easier with these stainless steel clips, rope, save them all. separating it makes things a lot easier there's our fish finder we're 47 feet 48 48.5 48.9 so we're going deeper and deeper there's our first buoy oh now you know my GPS position oh no oh no 54.7 55.1 alright, we found the spot 55.1 okay, we hooked on the pot, we

could

just throw this overboard, oh yeah, and I'm sure my coil will come right out.

This is a 3 8 inch polyester rope, a lot of times the things you'll buy in stores are like one, one quarter, which is super thin, but three eighths is a lot easier on your hands and helps a lot. Bring some gloves because if you don't have gloves your hands will get irritated, but it's still legal to use these laundry detergent containers, I know. Some people look down on it, but as long as you don't use cheats, I mean it's fine, look at that coil, that coil still works and looks good, okay, number two on the market, now let's get to what it is. 70 feet 40 55.70 Yeah, let's go to 70.

Now here's a scenario where I'm not quite sure what to do. Please leave in the comments what you would do in this situation. Those buoys aren't mine and this is about 70 feet away, so obviously. I'm not going to leave it right next to it, but is there a distance between commercial buoys that you recommend for dropping pots? I'm thinking about a quarter mile 400 feet and that should be fine. You know, give them plenty of room, but when this commercial crab season, when the commercial crab season opens, there are buoys everywhere. I think a commercial boat can have a thousand crab pots, something like that, go another quarter mile and we're at 70 feet.

Turn this herring into fresh Dungeness crab. man, so let's give it a little extra aroma, let's throw it off the rock, fish from there, I don't know, man, I like to bait my bags a lot. I know a lot of people like to go light, but why do I like it? to go heavy, okay, if you're using traps, you can go 24 hours, you can even do two days, but with these networks open, the longest you can leave them unattended I think is two hours and we'll probably check that first one. right after we dropped the last pot, so it'll be about an hour.

The same idea here we have the stainless steel carabiner and all these crab traps come with the loop and on the boot of the crab trap it has this buoy because if it were just hanging here, if you

lift

it up, the crab

could

come out, for what this should keep the line floating up and keep the opening clear for any crabs that come down 70 feet so this line floats fine this is poly line but a common mistake is if you have this floating line you just It will float on top, but what will really happen is that a little bit will float on top at first and then as the current carries the buoy away from the trap, the entire line will sink below, as long as there is some type of wind or current.

Having this poly rope is not a problem, but you don't want to fall into 40 feet of water with 200 feet of line, which could take a long time for that line to sink. Alright, boom number three, 70 feet, now 85. Man, I came out, I'm trying to get to 100 feet, but it's like, it's literally six miles to 100 feet, so I'm at 95 right now just to get to 100. probably another two or two miles at least, so I'm going to drop in here. I'm about two miles and three miles from the last buoy, okay, here we go, it's number five, it's a long trip, I finally got to thirty meters down, we're probably about seven miles away from the first one, there's a buoy commercial of someone right there going down today.

I think in deeper water there will be a bigger crab. I attached this polyethylene line and the lead line so it doesn't go anywhere. that's a good way to keep things nice and in order and you don't waste anything either, okay, number six comes in oh no, that was horrible oh no, I think I messed it up, I have to go get it back, okay, okay . I'm approaching 105 110 feet. I know the last one was a hundred, but I've done about three miles so far and we're only down a foot, which could be good, which means hopefully it's all flat and sandy, so I'm hoping.

I think we're ready to let go, let's just drop this last one, this one is deeper, the current is stronger, so I'm going to throw in the big yellow buoy that will keep everything afloat even if the current gets very strong, okay, the last one with a lot of bait. As the pot comes in, we'll mark this spot and now is the moment we've all been waiting for, let's check them out. By the time we get to the first one, it will be about an hour and a half and then each. It should be an hour and a half of soaking hour and a half of soaking hour and a half of soaking until we get to eight pots so we're going to back up slowly, we're going to take our time, let them soak a little more now this thing here oh man This thing is okay its weight in gold, which would also be a lot in gold, so this is just a Scottish crab puller.

Now I use barrel downriggers when I'm salmon fishing, so I have downrigger clips and connectors on my boat, this here. it's a cannon connector so what i did was splice it i cut the cannon connection and then i connected it to the scotty connection and it works the same everything is 12 volt so it's just a plug you know its plug really do not care. as long as the voltage is the same, so I'm going to plug this in, I'm going to put this in, I'm going to put on the gloves and something very important when you go crab, very, very important, I learned this because I put that underwater camera on it another day fishing 120 feet from The water saw tons of sand, but what I also saw was my bait, my bait, uh, mesh bag, just floating, floating everywhere, so I make sure it's safe.

Another thing I saw once I messed with the rope once these crabs. As they were feeding they felt a disturbance, they started running away as fast as they could, so it's very important that you put your buoy in range like this, pick it up, it comes this way so you can pick it up and you'll be limp once you hit that one. buoy, start pulling it. up and don't stop until you get to the top, if you play with it just stick it in the crab extractor, fifty percent of the crabs will find their way out, maybe even more, those things are so fast, man it's nice .back into the current instead of going against it, all you have to do is push this red button, it starts spinning when I need to stop it, I just press it, pull it, stop it, okay, our deck is clear, let's bring a baby crab, he's coming. up on the buoy I have to prepare my gloves, okay, the buoy is up here, let's go look for it, it's the first one with the camera, now I'm going to pick it up and I'm going to make it start working quickly, I don't.

I don't want to give those crabs time to come out, here we go, turn on the machine. Let's start everything right, here we go, the shooter is trying a little bit, which is fine, fine, fine, here we go, a couple of good ones there, oh, I think there are a lot of little ones, maybe not even any keepers, actually all the females are seen. Also, all the females in the shallow pot, literally all the females and all the rock crabs, that's not good, look at that rock crab, that's good, I never had one of those before, that's not a dungey either, I could keep that one, all the others. females we are going to release them all the rock crab will release them too there is no guardian in that all of you crazy people this is really going to be a good experiment to see if the small ones are close and the big ones the males are deeper we will find out today , here we go, number two, well, here we go, oh man, what is it, what is it, how

many

crabs do we have?

I'm going to say there are 230 crabs, maybe four keepers, I hope some come here. males here, any males here, oh man he's heavy, oh come on what do we have here? Well, all the dungeons, at least, man, okay, let's start throwing the little females, oh no, no, this is a male, will he keep? Although that's the question, no. What about this one? Yes, we have a goalkeeper, yes, the first one, we have one. Hopefully it will get better the deeper we go. This one could be close. Well, we have another goalkeeper. Two oh man, looks like that's it.

Two goalkeepers. Two male doormen. The rest. females, so we're going to throw them all away. It's not horrible, it could be better, but it's not bad. So far, my prediction was correct. The females were small and a little deeper, we have two male keepers so we did 40 55. Now this is 70 feet deep. so it's 70 feet where all the males hang out let's find out here it is here is the buoy okay I just want to see if this is heavy I'll go here I'll turn the thing on okay one two three and when this comes up I'll mess it up as we go oh , it's heavy, it's heavy, it's so heavy, we're 70 feet now, what do we have here here, oh my God, ah, I can't even

lift

it, come on, it has to be, it has to be. couple of keepers here bro, I can't even lift this, oh my god, oh crazy, that was crazy, okay, we got more males, that's for sure, this is a good keeper male, it feels very light, but It's six and a quarter, it's three. that's a male, that's a keeper, I'm putting them aside, there's four of them, this one's nice, yeah, he's six inches, there's five of them, and here's another good one, one's just short, every other big one here sounds feisty, oh, short too, man. many short shorts two goalkeepers woman woman ah I call them coke oh I think we have four goalkeepers although in that one we don't have at least three that's good and that herring is the bomb that lasts a while in these nets too well for me There is no doubt that crabbing gets better as we go, the next one is 80 feet.

It was supposed to be 85, but you know it took that long, so the next one is 80 feet, probably three more miles and I'm sorry. like it's even better, we'll most likely reach our limit today, but now we're going to get the jumbos. We're trying to find the jumbos. Now the last group was wild. I never had a pot so full of crabs. even though a lot of them were small thank god for this pop shooter man this is a life saver here it is here is what we have what we have oh yeah oh yeah a little one came out okay I think I see two keepers Oh man, oh man, one, yeah, it's definitely a keeper, yeah, it's a touch, it's cute, put that aside, how about this one, no, little one, this one, this one is close, oh my gosh, just little, little, little, That's the guardian, surely, is everything okay?

There's not much herring left, so they really got it. They better get to the next pots pretty quickly, so we went from 70 feet to 80 feet and now this is 90. Okay, let's see how heavy it's not heavy so far. Oh, I forgot my glove. On the one hand, there is no color yet, okay, we have color, we have color, we have a lot of crabs here, so many small ones, and I think it's because the commercial ones are everywhere and they have traps that the big ones can't get out of. traps, this one is close by, I think it might be the only one, yes it is a good keeper, there are so many small ones you have to make sure you don't want any small crabs accidentally getting into the boat, that's fine, it's good to do this while you're in the water, so you don't have to do it when you get home, okay, let's count how many crabs we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, that's not bad, seven dungeons and a big old rock crab , so I got three more pots, one crab per pot, I think we can do it, oh, it's hard in here, man, man, I don't think I see any guardians here at all, crazy, tired, no guardians in that one, oh God, okay, let's keep it. moving oh man it's heavy, too heavy, too heavy, here it is, oh yeah we do it, we do it yeah a jumbo that's what I'm talking about that puts us at eight women, man just one okay let's throw it out this, let's move on to the last boat.

All the short females start the pump, let's go last, last baby, oh yeah, oh yeah, okay, oh, anything, don't stay, this is close, I think that'll hold, that'll put us in nine, oh my god, just kidding, oh yeah, it's nine o'clock and I thought. I saw another one that could be kept, maybe not, although hey, we have nine, let's throw them out, ah, crazy, very crazy, well, still, overall, it's a fun experiment, I can't wait to go back, I have crab for a time, I'm happy, man. I'm happy, thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed it, we'll see how the surgery goes, I hope to be back out in no time, peace to all.