First Dungeness Crab Catch of the Summer

I learn something new every time I go fishing. Yesterday I learned that you can catch and eat small sharks in Puget Sound called dogfish, and that salmon eggs make lousy bait for crabs. I took my wife on her first crabbing trip on Saturday. I had been saving up leftover fish parts and old chicken for crab bait in the freezer since last fall, including some egg-laden salmon skeins from a guided charter I took in September. I had hoped to make caviar, but wasn’t able to process it quickly enough. My wife recently took an inventory of my freezer, and reported that it contained more food for crabs than for people. As a wedding gift, she has promised to buy me a second freezer to store all my seafood in the basement.

After getting my boat all slimy with dripping fish goo from the crab bait, we set our pots on the north side of Hat Island. Having a little time to kill for the first soak, we zipped over to Camano Head and started bottom fishing just for fun. I think Viktoria enjoyed it, because she was reluctant to quit to go pull our crab pots. I had brought my little kokanee rods for this trip, thinking their sensitivity would add to the fun. However, I latched onto something that felt big and feisty, and really caused my rod to bow. When I reeled it in I could see that it was a small shark! I had heard of them and knew right away it was a dogfish, but I never expected to catch one in this area. Since I didn’t know what the rules were for them or if they are any good to eat, I decided to release it. I learned later that you can keep and eat them, with some caveats. In fact, they are often used as a substitute for cod in fish and chips. However, their thorny back spines are mildly venomous, and all cartilaginous fish have an ammonia taste if not properly prepared. Maybe I’ll specifically target them sometime, and try to cook one.

Many saltwater fish snobs look down on casual bottom fishing, considering it to be inferior to more challenging fishing like for salmon. However, there’s a lot to like about it. Smaller bottom fish are abundant in Puget Sound, so they have generous daily catch limits. They are very easy to catch, so you can stay active all day long if you don’t have the patience to troll for salmon. Although in my area I mostly catch sand dabs, I have been amazed with the variety of other fish I’ve caught off the bottom, including rock sole, starry flounder, sculpins, rockfish (which you have to release), and now dogfish. A couple of years ago I actually caught a coho that way, not because he swallowed my hook but because he simply collided with it and got snagged!

When we returned to Hat Island, our first pot was empty and all the bait was gone. There was no trace of the salmon egg skeins which I had used to tempt the crabs. The next three pots had only a few small crabs, mostly females. At least the others had some bait in them, although again all the salmon skeins had completely disappeared. We decided to move to another area near Whidbey Island and set our pots there. Besides having minimal bait left, we could only use three of our four pots since one had no bait at all.

On our second pull we were grateful to get one good-sized, hard-shelled, male Dungeness, who went into the cooler. We decided to take a red rock crab as well, since my wife had never tried one. After that we decided to go home. Although it had been a disappointing day of crabbing because of my bait fiasco, at least we had one for dinner. I’ve caught some icky-tasting crabs off Mukilteo before, but this one was probably the freshest, most tender, most delicious crab I’d ever eaten. I think the trick is to dunk them in ice water as soon as you pull them out of the pot of boiling water. Our total catch that day was one Dungeness, one red rock crab, and two meal-sized sand dabs. On the bright side, it’s only the first week of the season.