My Basic Shrimping and Crabbing Setup

I've posted this on a couple Facebook and Reddit kayak groups but figured I'd throw it up here too since a lot of people seem to think shrimping by hand pulling is super hard from a "real" boat let alone a kayak when really its not that bad. 

My wife and I bought a house with pretty close beach access so we spent most of last summer crabbing and salmon fishing.  When shrimp season started getting close we figured that its pretty much the same as crabbing but with more rope, heavier pots, and less reliable weather.  Pulling 4 crab pots in a row isn't too difficult, 1 shrimp pot is about the same as that, and there is an hour in between pulls for the arms to recover.  If crabbing isn't hard for you, consider giving shrimping a try.

Here's the full setup:


The key elements are the scotty trap eze placed about as far away as you can reach and rotating it so that the rope stays as close to the boat as possible.  Putting it far away allows you to use your back to pull more and keeping the rope close means less lever arm to flip your boat.  We also have float bags in the front and these kayaks have rear bulkheads.  One person pulls while the other winds the rope.  We have identical setups and fish one pot each.



The hose reel is made by suncast and holds 400' of rope with enough room to spare that you don't have to worry about winding it super neat. This one has a guide for the hose that is handy for holding the reel in your lap to wind the rope. The pot and reel are secured by bungie cords tied to para cord and hooked to the coaming.  Its surprisingly secure.



Here is how we attach the rope to the spool.  The bouy stays clipped to the spool until we are ready to leave the pot then its clipped to the rope and the rope unclipped from the spool.  The idea is if we accidentally drop the whole thing the bouy will eventually pull the spool back up to the surface with the rope attached.



One pot we use is the ~25" SMI pot and the other is about the same size but has circular tunnels.  We put 4lbs in each corner to bring the total pot weight to about 20lbs.  The currents in our area are pretty weak and if you need to go up to 30 then it might be really difficult to pull.


If my 5'1" wife and I can do it from some rec kayaks you guys with decked out Hobies can do it too.

Bait was shrimp pellets, cat food, canned herring, and alaska fish fertilizer mixed to a little thinner than peanut butter consistency.  We packaged it in individual portions in vac bags but ziplock would work too.  Then cut the end of the bag and squeeze it into the bait canisters.

Crabbing is the same setup but we can stack two pots each and the rope coils fit in the little trunk area instead of needing a spool.

Terrific team setup and great ingenuity.

Thanks so much for this information! Really nice of you to share your ingenuity with the group. I am definitely going to try for shrimp next year with this setup.

As someone who has yet to do either, what makes shrimp pulls harder than crab pulls? Weight of the trap? Depth?

Yeah the depth, weight, and extra line is what makes shrimping more difficult.  My crab pots are about 12 to 15lbs with 100' of line dropping in no more than 80' of water.  Shrimp pots are 20 to 25lbs, 400' of line and up to 300' of depth.  Combine that with a 4 to 6 hour time limit for the day, a couple hundred boats each dropping 4 pots which means you need to have an efficient system for baiting, dropping, pulling, coiling, sorting shrimp, etc.  If the currents or wind are too high you might end up drifting into someone elses pot and getting tangled which would be a major PITA.  In our case we had a good system for crabbing so shrimping wasnt that much harder. 

That photo of a smiley kayaker with a pot full of shrimp and flat water makes it look awesome!  It's always like that, right?
Thanks for sharing your setup.

Yeah our setup definitely needs fairly calm water.  As soon as any whitecaps start forming it gets a little uncomfortable and we start looking to get off the water ASAP.  We only have to go a couple hundred yards to get to the right spot which helps a lot.