SOOO MANY CRABS! I could barely lift the pot!

look at this place y'all nobody in the parking lot and this is the scenario you got your boat out you want to go out on the water there's no wind it's just a perfect day and you might not know how to crab so i'm going to show you what you need to know what you need to do on a day where you maybe you've never even been crabbing so we're going to go through everything step by step and we don't know where they are today it's been a while since i've been out there so we're going to fish from 40 feet to 145 feet i think 40 feet 55 70 85 100 115 130 and 145 we're gonna drop eight pots at 15 foot increments see where the biggest crab are let's get on the water launch the boat get this day started hell yeah i unhook the safety straps everything is ready to go on the boat the only thing holding it onto the trailer is that front chain that safety chain and the belt once we get down to the water if it's a really low tide i know i've said this before but there's a trick i have and this is going to help you avoid any accidents when you're back in a trailer down a algae filled boat ramp because a lot of times when you put your parking brake on well all the time actually you put your parking brake on and that those rear wheels are locked okay so if your rear rear wheels break loose your whole car is going to slide into the water but if you have something holding all four wheels locked like another person but if you're doing it solo you can't have that somebody's foot needs to be on the brake and this is going to save so much anxiety when you come out here at a low tide and there's algae all over the ramp so here we go i'm just gonna get my buoys out on the side my fenders so i don't scratch the boat and then we'll launch it's really chill today so i can pick which side i want to go out on and then i can pick which side i want to put the fenders out on and that's how i tie them up here real simple like that keeps everything organized let's get this buoy out another one here ready to swing out i'm backing the boat down and you know when you get really good at backing down the trailer you can go down as fast as you want but that's always a bad idea because the momentum of the boat combined with the the the angle of the ramp once you start braking you can break away and that's always a bad idea so all right got the boat in the water it's not in too deep i got the car in park now and this is my my little friend here this stick we put the stick on the brake pedal and we pushed the stick on the seat now we got all four wheels locked let's go unlock the safety chain back or down obviously you make sure the drain plug is out safety chain off belt off normally when i'm backing it up i like to back it up right to where my wheels are in the water or where the boat comes out starts coming out all right should be able to pull the boat right off and when you're launching a boat whether you're solo or not it's always good to pull it back to the end of the dock that way if somebody else wants to come launch they can launch too and there's space for them all right let's go park the trailer hop in just got on the water our boat is full of stuff and we got about a 45 minute ride to the spot and it's the afternoon a lot of times the wind picks up in the afternoon but the forecast is calm all day so i got the life jacket on i always like to wear that if i'm so low at least that's the new thing i'm trying to do more also gonna throw the kill cord on just make my way over and enjoy this nice ride it's such a beautiful day hopefully we could end the day with some crab too so let's get out there and start dropping pots quite a ride out to the fishing spot so i'm gonna let the bait thaw off because it's all frozen still this is some herring that keith and i the los angeles caught the other day but all i'm going to do is just put some water in the bucket and let the bait soak let this soak for a while you can buy chicken you can catch your own bait we've got old rockfish carcasses works perfectly get them all thawed off by the time we get to the crabbing spot they'll be ready to go to stuff into the nets you know every area every harbor every marina is going to have us their own little tricks and tips and all that stuff out here in half moon bay once you exit the mouth you do not want to turn immediately because there's a really shallow reef all the white water way over there is breaking and i gotta get around it because i am gonna go up north up to pacifica and that's where we're gonna drop our pots but you know just just be aware you can check with the harbor master or just talk to other boaters too because the guys who are familiar with that with coming out here they'll all help you i'm sure [Music] all right we made it out we're going to start crabbing now now look at this check this out this is the setup this is the underwater camera for the crab pot got a super wide angle i'm going to put the the bait in right now and hopefully we get some good footage of these crab so i'm gonna do that right now this would be the first one going out all right here's our herring a bunch of it should be thawed off so i could take a big ol scoop big old handful i'm just gonna put him right here into our mesh bag probably gonna do about half of this bag then from a rockfish trip a while ago i saved a bunch of rock fish so i'm actually going to cut this one up and use the old rock fish too just cutting it up just so it has a little scent well i don't have my knife readily available so i'm just going to poke it with this gaff a few times up the bag so this is my first buoy this is about 60 feet of line and we're going in 40 feet of water you always want a little extra line because with the current it's going to pull that buoy down and if it's just vertical you're probably going to lose things so i'm going to toss this actually i'm going to put us in forward toss the buoy overboard get all the line out nice and easy nice and easy there's our herring and when you're putting these in it's really important to keep them tight you know i found that out i found that out the hard way keep them tight down to the bottom otherwise the bag floats everywhere and it's a lot easier for these crab to get off so i got that tight down to the bottom all right next one's ready to go the bait bag is in there tight it's not going to be floating around with the current now we're in 44 feet so we got 10 more feet to go that's going to attach to the pot and this here is our extra coil this is 160 feet but we don't need 160 feet when we're fishing 55 feet of water so this is our coil that we're not going to be fishing this is what we are going to be fishing and this is going to stick up at the top near the buoy all i did was wrap it around my arm several times and then just wrapped it around the coil so you know hopefully hopefully that works boom all right this i learned from christian thank you christian for you know just making this thing a little bit easier with these stainless steel clips rope keep them all separate it makes things so much easier there's our fish finder we got 47 feet 48 48.5 48.9 so we're going deeper and deeper there's our first buoy oh now you know my gps position oh no oh no 54.7 55.1 all right we found the spot 55.1 all right we hooked up on the pot we could just throw this overboard oh yeah and i'm confident my coil will come right out now this is 3 8 inch poly rope a lot of times the stuff you'll buy in the stores is like one one quarter which is super thin but three eighths is just a lot easier on your hands and it helps a lot bring some gloves because if you don't have gloves your hands will get raw still is legal to use these laundry detergent containers i know it's kind of looked down on upon by some people but as long as you're not using traps i mean that's okay look at that coil that coil's still working looking good all right number two market now let's go to what is it 70 feet 40 55.70 yeah let's go to 70. now here's a scenario that i'm not quite sure what to do please leave in the comments what would you do in this situation those buoys there those are not mine and this is right about 70 feet so obviously i'm not going to drop it right next to it but is there a distance between buoys between commercial buoys that you recommend to drop pots i'm thinking a quarter mile 400 feet and that should be fine you know give them a lot of space but when these commercial crab season when the commercial crab season opens there are buoys everywhere i think one commercial boat can have a thousand crab traps something like that passing it up going another quarter mile and we're at 70 feet turn this herring into some fresh dungeness crab man so let's give it a little extra scent we're going to throw that out of the rock fish in there i don't know man i like to heavily bait my bags i know a lot of people like to go light but why i like to go heavy okay if you're using traps you can go 24 hours you can even go two days but with these open nets the longest you can leave them unattended for i believe is two hours and we're going to check that first one probably right after we dropped the last pot so that's going to be about an hour same idea here we got the stainless steel carabiner and all these crab traps come with the loop and on the boot on the crab trap itself it has this buoy because if it were just dangling in here if you pulled it up the crab could come out so this should keep the line floating up and keep the opening clear for any crab going down 70 feet so this line floats right this is the poly line but a common misconception is if you have this floating line it's just going to float on top but what's really going to happen is a little bit will float on top at first and then as the current pulls the buoy away from the trap all the line will sink under so as long as there's some kind of wind or current having this poly rope is no problem but you wouldn't want to drop in 40 feet of water with 200 feet of line that could be that could take a long time for that line to sink down all right next all right boom number three 70 feet now 85. [Music] man i went out i'm trying to get to 100 feet but it's like sheesh it's like literally six miles out to 100 feet so i'm at 95 right now just to get to 100 is probably another two or two miles at least so i'm going to drop here i'm i'm about two miles three miles away from the last buoy all right here we go it's number five going in it's a long ride finally made it to a hundred feet deep we're probably about seven miles away from the first one there's someone's commercial buoy right there going deep today i think the deeper water gonna have the bigger crab i spliced together this poly line and the lead line so that's not going anywhere that's a good way to keep things nice and straight and you don't waste anything either all right number six going in oh no that was horrible oh no i think i messed that one up i gotta go retrieve that one okay all right it's good i'm closing in on 105 110 feet i know the last one was a hundred but i've been going for like three miles so far and we've only dropped a foot which could be good which means it's all flat and sandy hopefully so i think we're ready to drop let's just drop this last one this one is deeper the current is stronger so i'm throwing out the big yellow buoy that'll keep everything afloat even if the current gets really strong all right last one heavily baited pot going in we'll mark this spot and now it's the moment we've all been waiting for let's go check these the fir by the time we get to the first one it's going to be about an hour and a half and then every one it should be an hour and a half soak hour and a half soak hour and a half soak all the way to eight pots so we're gonna troll back in slow gonna take our time let them soak a little longer now this thing here oh man this thing is worth its weight in gold that would be a lot in gold too so this is just a scotty crab puller now i use cannon downriggers when i'm fishing for salmon so i've got downrigger clips and connectors on my boat this here is a cannon connector so what i did was i spliced i cut off the cannon connection and then i attached it to the scotty connection and it works the same it's all 12 volt so it's just a plug you know it's plug doesn't really matter as long as the voltage is the same so i'll plug this on put this up put my gloves on and something very important when you're going crab very very important i learned this because i slapped on that underwater camera another day fishing 120 feet of water saw tons of sand dabs but what i also saw was my bait my bait uh mesh bag just floating floating all over that's why i'm making sure that it's secure another thing that i saw once i messed with the rope at all once these crab feeding felt some disturbance they started fleeing as fast as they could so it's really important you got your buoy scoped out this way pick it up coming this way so you can pick it up and you'll have slack once you touch that buoy start pulling it up and don't stop until you get it to the top if you mess around with it just getting it worked into the crab puller fifty percent of the crab are going to find their way out maybe even more those things are so fast [Music] man it's nice going back in the current instead of going against it all you got to do pull this red button it starts turning when i need to stop it i just press it pull it stop it all right our deck is clear let's get some crab baby [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right coming up on the buoy gotta get my gloves ready all right buoy's right up here let's go get it it's the first one with the camera now i'm going to pull up on it and i'm going to get it started going quick i don't want to give those crab any time to get out all right here we go start the machine let's just start it all right here we go the puller is straining a little bit which is good all right all right all right here we go a couple good ones in there oh i think lots of small ones maybe not even any keepers actually all females look at that all females on the on the shallow pot literally all females and all rock crabs that's not good look at that rock crab that's a good one never had one of those before it's not a dungey either i might keep that one all right all the other females we're going to release them all the rock crab will release them too not a keeper in that one y'all crazy man this is really going to be a good experiment to see whether or not the small ones are in close and the big males are deeper we're gonna find out today here we go number two all right here we go oh man what is it what is it how many crab we got i'm gonna say like it's 230 crab maybe four keepers i hope here comes any males in here any males in here oh man it's heavy oh come on what do we got in here okay all dungees at least man all right let's start throwing away the small females oh no no this one's a male will it keep though that's the question nope how about this one yeah we got a keeper yeah first one we got one hopefully it gets better the deeper we go this one might be close all right we got another keeper two oh man looks like that's it two keepers two keeper males the rest look like females so we're gonna dump them all out not horrible could be better but it's not bad so far my prediction was right shallow was small females and a little bit deeper we got two male keepers so we did 40 55 now this is 70 feet deep so it's 70 feet where all the males hang out let's find out here's the here's the here's the buoy all right i just want to see if this is heavy i'll get over here turn on the thing all right one two three and as this comes up i'll disorganize it as we go oh it's heavy it's heavy it's very heavy we have 70 feet now what do we have here here it is oh my god ah i can't even lift it come on there's got to be got to be a couple keepers in here bro i can't even lift this up [Applause] oh my gosh oh crazy that was crazy all right well we got more males that's for sure this is a nice keeper male it feels really light but that's six and a quarter that's three that's a male that's a keeper i'm putting them to the side that's four this one is nice yep that's six inches that's five and here's another good one that one's just just short any other big ones in here sounds feisty oh just short too man a lot of shorts short two keeper female female ah i call them coke oh i think we got four keepers though on that one no we got at least three that's good and that herring is the bomb that lasts for a while in these nets too well to me there's no question that the crabbing is getting better the deeper we get next one we're going to 80 feet uh it was supposed to be 85 but you know it took so long so the next one is 80 feet probably three more miles and i feel like it's going to be even better we're most likely going to get our limit today but now we're going to get the jumbos we're trying to find the jumbos now last pool was wild i never had a pot so filled with crabs even though a ton of them were small thank goodness for this pop puller man this is a lifesaver here it is here it is what do we got what do we got oh yeah oh yeah a little guy came out all right i think i see two keepers oh man oh man one yes that's definitely a keeper yeah it is it touches that's a nice one put that to the side there how about this one nope small this one this one's close oh my gosh just small small small that's keeper for sure all right one not too much herring left so they really got it better get to the next pots pretty fast so we went from 70 feet to 80 feet and now this is 90. all right let's see how heavy it is not heavy so far oh i forgot my glove on one hand no color yet okay we got color we got color we got a lot of crab here so many small ones and i think it's because the commercial guys are all around and they got the traps the big ones can't get out of the traps this one is close i think that might be the only one dang yeah that's a keeper nice so many small ones you make sure you don't want to have any small crab accidentally get in the boat that's a fine it's nice to do this while you're out on the water so you don't have to do it when you go back home all right let's count how many crab we got one two three four five six seven that's not bad seven dungees and a big old rock crab so we got three more pots one crab per pot i think we can do it oh it's rough out here man man i don't think i see any keepers in here at all crazy man tired with no keepers in that one oh goodness all right let's keep it moving oh man it's heavy too heavy too heavy here it is oh yeah we do we do yes yes a jumbo that's what i'm talking about that puts us at eight female man just one all right let's dump this out get on to the last pot all short females start the puller let's go last one last one baby oh yeah oh yeah okay oh anything no keepies this is close i think that'll keep that'll put us at nine oh my god kidding oh yes it is nine and i thought i saw another one that might keep maybe not though well we got nine let's toss them ah crazy so crazy well still all in all a fun experiment can't wait to get back in i got crab for a while i'm happy man i'm happy thanks for watching hope you enjoyed it we'll see how the surgery goes hopefully i'll be back out there in no time peace y'all

Channel: Fisherman's Life

Views: 3,537,305

Keywords:

Id: H2ee-1ESs3I

Length: 26min 58sec (1618 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022