A Crabber’s Paradise: The Oregon Coast

It turns out that the Oregon Coast is a crabber’s paradise. They are much more abundant there than in Puget Sound. In Oregon you can crab nearly all year round. You can fish with three pots each instead of two, and keep up to 12 male Dungeness each instead of five. You’re also allowed to keep smaller ones in Oregon. While searching online for a place to drop my pots, I discovered that you can actually rent a boat and gear. I wanted my friends to have the experience of crabbing without having to wait for the summer season on Puget Sound.

At Garibaldi Marina they have a whole bunch of 16′ aluminum boats for rent, driven by little 9.9 HP kicker motors. These are about the size of my boat but much more basic and slow. You can bring your own gear if you like, but I opted to try the rings they provided. They provided one ring for each person, six baits (some big ugly fish I couldn’t identify), PFDs, 3-day Oregon shellfish licenses for all, and an orientation. They only rent during incoming tides, to make sure noobs don’t get dragged out to sea by accident. The incoming tides also bring crabs into the bay. That day we had to be there at 7:30 a.m. to catch our window. The weather that morning was pretty cold (maybe around 40F) but unexpectedly sunny and calm. They sent us out to a place across Tillamook Bay called “Crab Harbor”. It didn’t take us long to get four keepers, but then after that we kept pulling up pretty full rings without any keepers.

It was a great bonding experience for us, requiring lots of teamwork. While the pots are traps with one-way doors designed to be left for hours, the rings are basically just nets. Rings are a lot more work. They can be much more productive than pots in shallow water if you pull them every ten minutes or so, but you have to pull decisively and constantly to keep the crabs from falling out. My friend’s daughter proved to be good at this. We made the rounds setting and retrieving our three rings in circular fashion. We were klutzy at first but quickly got better. The rings would always get stuck on the gunnels of the boat as we tried to bring them onboard, requiring another person to help. It was my job to drive the boat, and it was actually pretty hard to get it close enough to be able to grab a rope without driving over it.

The two ladies both let their guard down and got painfully clawed by crabs once each (part of the initiation). For my part, I let my guard down several times and got a rope wrapped around the engine shaft while retrieving. I got good at shutting the engine down, tilting it up, freeing the rope, dropping it down, and restarting it again. The last time was the worst. Two guys in another rental boat were using their own pots, but with floating yellow rope instead of weighted line like you’re supposed to use. I accidentally drove over one and got it totally wrapped around my prop, instantly killing the engine. That one took me nearly ten minutes to unravel, but I got the job done and we went back to crabbing. Halfway through our nearly four-hour tide window, we had to add more bait, and when we were done we had to cut it free and toss it all into the sea.

The time went by fast. We all came back a little wet and cold and smelling of the fishy bait, but with smiles on our faces. The marina staff cooks up your first 12 crabs for you for free, and then directs you to their outdoor cleaning table. So, the ladies got to learn how to do all that. They use a gigantic pot to cook everybody’s catch at once, each in their own mesh bag. I prefer to clean before cooking, but for them it’s much more sanitary to cook first. A father and son from Tualatin were out at the same time as us. They were much more experienced and had their own gear (a variety of different pots) and brought in 14 keepers. I talked to them afterwards and learned that they do this frequently, judging it to be cheaper and less hassle than owning their own boat. It was their rope I had run over and got caught in my prop. They apologized for the floating rope, and we all laughed about it. They gave us a lot of tips to improve our catch, as well as on stuff to do in Oregon. They recommended that we drive down to Newport the next day. More on that tomorrow. At first my friends seemed disappointed that we only caught four, but honestly if we had caught as many as the other guys we would have had a big problem on our hands. As it was, we were having to eat crab for breakfast to finish it all up before our trip was over. Having a VRBO house allowed us to wash our fishy clothes, store our catch in the fridge, and cook it as we liked. It was an epic day that the three of us will always remember.