Fish Sniffer On Demand Digital Edition Issue 2724 Nov 9-23 | Page 23

VOL.37 • ISS. 24 Nov 9 - 23, 2018 Crab Season Is Here! 23 Are You Ready For The Crabbing Made Easy… by Cal Kellogg November 3 Crab Opener? I F or Norcal outdoor enthusiasts, the fall has so much to offer that even if the season stretched out for six months, a sportsman would have a tough time sampling all the great action the fall months have to offer. A very prelim- inary list looks something like this. Stripers in the Delta, trout chasing bait at reservoirs, duck season, deer season, pheasant and quail seasons, lingcod moving shallow to spawn and….well you get the idea, so much to do, so little time! If you’re a saltwater angler, there’s likely one more thing sandwiched near the top of your “fall to do list”…I’m talking about crabbing. The general crab season is now underway! I’ve been crabbing on and off for the better part of 35 years. It’s fun, it’s addicting and if you’ve never had fresh cooked crab you are really missing out on some fabulous eating! Some of the folks reading this have probably been crabbing longer than me and there are undoubted others who have never crabbed but would like to. With crabbing season about a month away I’ll toss out some of what I’ve observed over the years. I think this information will likely be most useful to the new crabbers out there, but there might be a thing or two that will resonate with the veterans too. There is a bunch of different crabbing gear on the market and we don’t have room for a full blown gear discus- sion. If you are a by Cal Kellogg boater looking for gear I would advise that you buy traditional cage style pots that are heavy so they stay put. For the would be pier anglers out there, I’ve done very well with super simple net ring traps weighted with a quartet of lead sinkers. Glossing over the traps, what I really want to take a close look at are the corner- stone concepts of crabbing including best times, locations, baits and baiting strategy. If you are fishing from piers you really don’t have a choice about where you drop your pots (don’t worry there are dozens of productive piers and jetties dotting the coast). Boaters on the other hand have the luxury of being selective about where they drop their gear. You can find Dungeness crabs in areas of rock, but you’ll find the largest numbers of crabs on bottoms composed of sand or sand and firm mud. I try to set my pots in water ranging from 25 to 60 feet deep max simply because I don’t want to kill myself pulling deepwater sets. Early in the season it’s easy to find productive shallow water action. As the season progress and the shallows get cleaned out a bit, you’ll either have to ’ve seen deckhands on charter boats hand line crab pots out of 40 or 50 feet of water as the deck pitched and rolled. It looked like a great way to get hurt. If you’re looking to get into sport crabbing or you want to make sport crabbing easier the team at Scotty has you covered. The Scotty Line Puller is the ultimate crab and prawn trap pulling machine. This compact puller makes for easy stowing, and attaches directly to your existing Scotty downrigger mounts. It’s high torque 12 volt motor pulls 1 crab trap, and up to 4 prawn traps with ease. The 2500 Line Puller has a low amp move deeper or do some prospecting to find some shallow water areas that have been overlooked. When we refer to the best times for saltwater fishing, we are generally referring to the tides. As a general rule I like to crab incoming tides that are of a moderate size. Current is essential to crabbing success because it’s the current that broad- casts the scent of your bait. You want a long steady current flow, not a big surge. Typically you get this kind of flow with an incoming tide. The outgo tends to produce heavier current. If you leave your pots out overnight you’ll obviously be working multiple tides. Day crabbers should stick with incoming tides if they have a choice. So now that we’ve got an idea of where and when to drop our gear, the next step is getting a supply of high quality bait. A lot of folks think that since crabs on scavengers they’ll eat just about anything. That may be true to some extent, but just as with other forms of fishing for the best success you’ll want to put some time and effort in making 3622 sure you have the most effective bait draw and a convenient on/off switch, making this product super simple and a pleasure to use Accommodating ¼ -3/8 inch line, this product has a heavy duty stainless steel composite construc- tion. The Scotty Line Puller is fully assembled and comes equipped with a Scotty/Marinco plug, receptacle and mount. This product is designed to work every time and it’s built to last! For more information about the Line Puller and Scotty’s full line of fine products visit them online at www. scotty.com. available. Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of different baits, but these days I rely primarily on three: turkey wings or chicken wings, squid and sardines. Scent draws crabs to your trap. Once inside you want the crabs to find plenty of tasty hard to eat food. The sound of crabs having a party inside your trap, does nothing but attract more and more crabs. If the crabs inside the trap run out of snacks not only will the trap stop attracting new crabs but the crabs you’ve already got inside will get restless and unless your traps are really fool proof some of them will find their way back out! Crabs make their living cleaning up fish carcasses. If you use something like filleted bottom fish carcasses for hanging bait, crabs clean the bones in nothing flat. Apparently they don’t get much practice dealing with the turkey skin because it takes them a lot longer to clean a couple turkey wings than it does a lingcod carcass. When I bait my traps I like to put a bait bottle inside crammed full of chopped squid and sardines. I wire a pair of turkey wings inside making sure that they are suspended in the center of the trap. It’s the scent of the chopped bait that draws the Cali S fornia Dawn portfiShing Now at Berkeley Marina! Chef ey all Marc's G Daily! n O pe Crab, Rockfish & Lingcod COMBO TRIPS CAPTAIN CAPTAIN JAMES JAMES JR. JR. SMITH SMITH start NOV 3RD! Daily Departures at 6:00 AM From Berkeley Marina Reservations & Information: (510) 417-5557 Website: http://californiadawn.com E-mail: acaptainsmith@aol.com