T-Bay 8/3

First and foremost this is not a kayak report, but it's posted here due to the spot being a popular kayak fishing spot. I had every intention of kayak fishing this morning except I had a buddy who is not a kayak owner who wanted to fish the south jetty, since the ocean would have been a little sporty I didn't feel bad missing the day at PC to take him out in my little Smokercraft, we loaded up with 6 crab pots and trout gear around 7:30 we were on the water dropping pots in 7-12 feet of water and started fishing. Beautiful not windy, no current kinda day. It was a little foggy but very warm.  It took us a while to find some biters, slowly working our way out to the bend in the jetty, caught a few small but keepable size blacks, a couple greenling we let go (haven't been a fan of eating them lately) and a few coppers we had to let go. A good size bass here or there and at 9 we decided to see how the pots were doing.

Crabbing was definitely the star today, first pot we had 14, massive ones. The size you don't need to measure, second pot we added 13 more. Some smaller with the second pot, so we counted out the 24 biggest and from there we played swap out with the biggest ones as the day went on. Never have I seen the crabbing so good in Tillamook. We could have gotten 4 or 5 limits with keepers in 6 pots. Was not a bad Monday out there! We went back after checking the crab pots to find a few decent biters here and there. Nothing red hot with the bottomfish bite but we ended up with 8. The crab measured in the picture was the smallest one we kept.

Thanks for the report. Sounds like a great day with huge crab. Definitively a whole lot more crabbing action than the last time I tried in the bay (months ago).

Mmm....I saw Mojo's open invite for the weekend and feel very tempted now......

Very nice!  I had a similar day last Wednesday.  First pot that I pulled up after about an hour had like 8 keepers.  I had 18 between three traps and felt really bummed that I had to throw back six of them.    They were all like 6.5" or better.  I gave half away to a friend and have gone through the rest already... time for another trip...

I dropped my pots around Sow and Pigs in about 35' of water at high tide around 9:30AM.

Not looking for specifics, but what general area where you dropping your pots?

Not looking for specifics, but what general area where you dropping your pots?

I crab right off the south Jetty. Since we took so many we crabbed both shallow, farther away from the jetty and deeper in closer to the jetty with pots being about 100' apart generally. All did well through the slack tide.

Are they starting to fill out a bit. Got some 2 weeks ago and they were pretty soft

Are they starting to fill out a bit. Got some 2 weeks ago and they were pretty soft

a couple full ones, and a couple half full ones. The majority were 3/4 or so. Perfect balance of meat quantity and easy to crack in my opinion. This time of year is actually my favorite for crabbing due to that

What a great catch. The crab are almost as big as the rockfish!

What a great catch. The crab are almost as big as the rockfish!

After we pulled up the first one I was picturing how I would have done it in my kayak. Woulda been interesting 😅