Yesterday was the opener, we took 4 limits.

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Go fishing if you can! It had been awhile since they cancelled the salmon season back in April.

Nice take. They are pretty good sized.

Nice feast

Excellent catch!

My favorite crab.

My grandfather had crab traps when he lived in Sequim. Went out in the morning with pots and were eating them for lunch.

That fresh they taste nothing like what we can get 300 miles away, probably 3-4 days old.

Only thing I miss about the coast is the seafood. Weather is not conducive to outdoor activities most of the time.

The last couple of years we have only been able to run "hoops", and not "traps". This is an attempt to keep whales safe from getting tangled in the line.

Traps you could keep out for days / a week as the catch can't escape. With the hoops, you can't do that because once they eat the bait the crabs leave, this forces you to check the traps the same day, and the side goal being you would find a snagged whale before you kill it.

The downside is the crab can escape if you are not quick on pulling the hoop from the bottom, as soon as it leaves the seafloor, they know something is wrong and start climbing out. If you don't have a competent crew ( ), you can lose some. We lost a jumbo from the top of the hoop right at the boat. Keep a landing net handy just for that reason.

Oh, a gaff or boat hook that floats, to grab the buoy is a nice thing. Ask me how I know.

That’s one of the things I miss the most about Sequim, Wa.

A final tip when it comes to cooking them, is kill them by cutting or tearing them in half, and then clear from the carapace and gills. This way you can cook more than twice as many at a time and not cook anything but meat (not a mustard fan). If she can do it...

I have eaten all sorts of crab and try any new one I haven't tried before.  Dungeness is still my all time favorite crab.

When you’re using hoops try wrapping your bait up in old shredded pantyhose. This will keep the crabs from running off.

We use bait bags and jars, they can't run off with it them. They just stay until they eat it all. The jars get whatever, from the cheapest chicken, to leftover sardines that were live bait last year for halibut or salmon, to cat food. We stuff the bags with leftover carcasses from caught salmon, halibut or cod.  We will happily trade, any day, a carcass or a can of cat food for any number of Dungeness crab. A large salmon head is my favorite bait in a bag.

The main key on baiting hoops or traps is to make sure they have to be inside the trap or hoop to eat the bait, if they can eat from outside of the trap one is just wasting time and bait. Get them inside if you want to catch them. Fasten the bait at the very bottom in the center of the hoop. As my bud Schad says, do the same thing every time when baiting traps or recovering them. He wasn't pictured, but used to fish commercially and regularly showed up at the dock with his fish monger waiting to buy 500+ crabs from him for $10 each per week. A one man show. That is hard work.

How many in a limit down there? Here in Oregon four limits would be 48 and we would be eating crab for days.

10 Per person, per day bag limit here.

Is there a possession limit? As in, can you offload to shore and then head back out for more?

Thanks-

Here, there is for salmon, but the more I crab fish with my buds the more nervous they get, and the fish cops, as designed I think, leave the regulations very unclear.

I'd like a bit of slack on the interpretation. My online license is four feet long, compared to my buds' in person one.

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Glad to see you prep them the right way before boiling!  Can't wait to get back on the water.  My boat is currently in the shop getting a full conversion.