Depoe Bay Crabbing

Hello,

I am wanting to do some crabbing this weekend and was hoping to drop pots at Depoe Bay while i fish for the tournament.  Is their good sand bottoms out their?  I have never crabbed at Depoe Bay.  Any tips where to find crab grounds would be great.  Feel free to pm me if you dont want info shared.  Thanks again for all the help.  I also thought about driving to Newport Friday/Saturday night and drop a pot for an overnight soak and pick it up the following day.

I've lost a pot at Newport due to strong current movement.  If you place an overnight pot make sure it is going to stick and not head on out to sea.

The only place I've ever done any good was north of Gov't Point 70+ FOW.
Crabbing from a yak at Depoe isn't worth the effort.  YMMV

A lot of folks drop a couple hundred yards south of the line to the whistle from the bell halfwayish (80 fow).

I've always left the crab trap at home when fishing Depoe Bay, but last time I saw a kayaker had a load of crab there.  Where is best?  North or south and how deep?  I've seen pots to the north set in about 70' and to the south in over 100'.

Dave

Ask the same question you're going to get almost the same answer. I was going off of memory above when I said 80, but 90-ish is where you want to drop. The bulk of the bottom fishing charters, especially as the tourist season progresses turn north towards Siletz Reef. To keep your gear out of their way and to not have to deal directly with their wakes upon their return when pulling your gear the safer bet is to drop south of the line.

You can catch crab to the north as well, but when you have a full pot with a bunch of sea stars hanging on and the Tradewinds boats don't throttle down and you can't turn your bow into their wake you may have wished you dropped on the south side,

Most of the crab gear you see north of the line belongs to the charter boats and they haul it in on the way back from their bottom fishing/crabbing combos. The rest of it belongs to a "consortium" of sport fishing boats that moor in DB. Come hell or high water someone needs to pull and rebait them on a rotating basis and they all share the catch. Those pots will be out there for the rest of the summer. You can tell by how much growth is on the rope, below the float it looks like a kelp stalk.