I have said before, my favorite kind of fishing is the one that I am doing. My boys were headed out to a campout and we had a free day. My wife wanted to go to the coast and do some crabbing.

There are some people in my family that are pretty ‘coasty’ (including my wife). Both my grandfather and uncle had houses at the beach and looked for any excuse to go, including I remember checking the mail. Me on the other hand, I want a compelling reason but crabbing seems like a good one.

People not familiar with the pacific northwest coastline may be jealous that in less than an hour we can see the ocean. Don’t get me wrong, it can be beautiful. I think where most of the disconnect between perception and reality with me is that it is a hard formula to figure out whether it is going to be nice or miserable at the coast.

One thing I know, if it is hot here where I live, it is often can be cloudy or even rainy at the coast. In the summer time, even when it is sunny the wind blows pretty stiffly to the point that it is 70 degrees and cold (or sand in your face) because of wind chill. I think many of the best days are in the off season. That happened to be Saturday.

The conventional wisdom is that crabbing is best done in months that don’t contain an ‘R’. That means May, June, July and August are out. It is not that you cannot crab, it is more that it is molting season and the meat doesn’t fit the shell and tends to be soft rather than firm.

There is also a best time of day to do it. The best time is slack tide or the time in between incoming and outgoing tide. The incoming tide pushes crabs closer to the shore and the outgoing pulls them out. I will also say, the tides can also move your gear around as well. One time, my family lost all of their pots to a strong tide and could never find them again.

The technique is pretty simple. You attach some bait to the ring, throw the ring in the water and wait. After 15-30 minutes, pull up the ring keeping tension on the rope so the crabs don’t slip out as you are pulling them up. Once the ring is on the dock, you have to check for sex and size. Males, wider than 5 3/4″ are keepers. Crabs should be kept alive until boiled. They should be immediately cooled and cleaned and they should also be kept as close to freezing as possible until eaten. And, they should be eaten within a couple of days if not frozen.

We dilly-dallied our way to the place that we were going to crab. Consequently, we got there at 2pm and they closed the dock at 3pm. It was such a nice day that we did it anyway and we got two keepers in our 45mins of fishing. I would say that this is not always the case. I have been on days where all day yielded two crabs. So, we got lucky but that is fishing.

One last thing about inexperienced crabbing. Sea lions have figured out that the crab traps contain food. They will tear your traps apart and eat your bait and crabs. Traditionally, bait is the remains of filleted rock-fish. Some people use chicken and claim that has less problems. I have even heard of people using road kill as bait as well. But, what I am trying to say is that if you see sea lions, crabbing can be pretty poor. Fortunately, we didn’t have that problem.

End Your Programming Routine: Oregon requires a separate shellfish license to crab. It is good for the calendar year and with that we can also harvest clams as well. This is also something that I have never tried. I see more trips to the beach this year to harvest the bounty of what we have available.