More Crabbing

    With good weather predicted for the coast last Friday, Jammer,  my friend Dave from work, his friend Christina from the Willamette Week and I decided  to do some crabbing.  It was gray and  foggy all the way out to the coast which made us think we were in for a wet  day, but right as we got there the sky cleared.   For the rest of the day there was not a cloud in the sky and only a  slight breeze.  Between us we had 7 rings  and 2 traps which was more than enough to keep us busy.  We crabbed from low tide up to high tide and  the action was almost non-stop.   I think I only had 2 pulls all day that came  up without any crabs, and those were probably because I was pulling too  slow.  Most pulls were full of crabs,  admittedly a lot of the crabs were small with way too many within a quarter  inch of being legal but there was a good amount of legals mixed in.  At the end of the day I think we had 35 crabs  between the 4 of us.  Both Dave and  Christina had a great time and Dave is already itching to head out there again.  I didn’t take any good pictures on the water,  but here are a before and after picture of my crabs.  Also, I think I need to do a product review  on the Martha Stewart 12 qt Multi-pot as I was able to steam 7 crabs at a time.   

Nice job Nate! Did you hit Siletz Bay again?


I went down to Waldport Saturday and it was so so. I was sadly surprised to find so many soft ones still. The females that were so thick a few weeks ago have moved out of the bay, which is nice because I was going to go broke feeding those ravenous b!tches.

What's going on with those legless crab? 
 
I've never seen anyone mutilate a crab in that direction before. 
Usually, the top comes off, guts are trashed, body split with legs still attached. 

You guys DID pull the meat out of the bodies?      


I'd guess 1/2 or more of the meat in a Dungie is in the "body" above the legs...

PP, That's what I was thinking.

Maybe he's got some voodoo technique for removing the body meat or something? 

Siletz bay it is, and there were a few soft ones mixed in. 
I took the top off the first few crabs but that was taking to long.  After a while I realized that if I was careful and pulled the legs right where they attach to the body I could get at the body meat.  With the softer crabs the meat would come out with the leg , but for the others I had to use a small scoop to loosen the meat and then pull it out.  This technique worked so well in fact that at times I was even able to pull some of the gills through the legs.  If you look carefully at the picture you can see that where the legs were is now hollow.       

what about the butter?

what about the butter?

If you don't drink the butter can you really call yourself a crabber?  I think not... love me some crab butter

there is nothing better to wash down a clutch of fresh eggs........good times     

Ooooh Yea........crabbing was good. Lets just put it this way. We could tell there were a lot of crabs in the ring, just from how heavy the rings are to pull up. They'ed sometimes be three deep in the bottom of the rings. I would also guess that 95% of the crabs were males. I brought home some big one's too. The biggest was 7 7/8" inches and weighed 3.1 lbs. I would also bet that 10% or so were soft shell's. The hard shell's were super meaty though. My favorite kayak crabbing spot is no longer a secret, so get out there a kayak crab. Crab close the inlet by the park, but be very careful on an out going tide. The current gets rippin pretty quick. The currents are very localized though, so pretty easy to avoid. The girl in the picture is very cool. She is Christina and a writer for Willamette Week. She was taking lots of pictures for a story that she is doing for the WW. It prints in a week or two. There goes my favorite kayak crabbing hole.. Haha Tight Lines!!!   

Careful what you wish for...