The Skipper and the Fisher

 

The Skipper and the Fisher
As I mentioned in a prior post one of the reasons we decided to visit the Oregon coast is CRABBING!!!! While doing my research for the trip I came upon a website for a bay marina that rents little steal boats with an outboard motor, plus all the gear for crabbing. On their website they had a short example video of two guys taking the boat out, dropping a pod, then relaxing for a bit before they pulled up a bucket full of huge crab. We knew when we saw the video we probably wouldn’t catch that many crabs but it looked so much easier than the crabbing on the show The Deadliest Catch, we were sold we could Crab.
So today was finally the day, we dressed ourselves in layers and headed to the marina. When we arrived we were told it wasn’t crabbing time and we had a few hours to kill. I decided that would be perfect because then we could also enjoy a great lunch while out on the boat. As much as I love food one of my most favorite meals is a well put together picnic. I put together a beautiful lunch pack which included a baguette sandwich with all kinds of fresh ingredients from the cooler, a fresh bag of cherries, chips, salsa and a couple of waters. Yum!
We come back at our appointed time and a more than eager to start CRABBING! Unfortunately we have no idea what we are doing so we had to be walked through all of the steps before being let out on our own. Once we were introduced to our boat the “Skipper” we quickly learned that one person had to drive and the other person would be the crabber, because the crabber has to use a hook to pull in the pods while the driver maneuvers. We decide that Scott will be the fisher and I will be the Captain. The girl at the dock was good at her job and made a lot of jokes and tired to make light of the fact we were novices. Soon it was time to go and she asked who was going to drive, Scott and I both look at each other and he decided it would probably be best if he drove us out of the dock, I happily agreed as I have no idea how to drive an outboard motor boat.  

So we are off and the first thing we do is drive "Skipper" straight into the boat in front of us. The dock girl's smile started to fade a bit but we quickly turned to assure her we would be ok. “You have your cell phone just in case you need to call?”- she asks. “We will be fine!”- we reply at the same moment we hit another boat. At this point I start laughing hysterically but the girl at the dock is definitely no longer smiling, she's somewhere between a concerned frown and pissed. Thankfully, we made it out of the dock without any further incident.
We motor out for a bit and I take control while Scott prepares the bait. Soon we are ready to drop our first line. This becomes another perfect example of when a little bit of experience goes a long way. Scott drops the line but then I proceed to drive the boat over the line in the middle of the drop. First lesson of the day, keep the boat in neutral when dropping or pulling in pods. Drops for pods two and three were just as time consuming and equally amusing. This all seemed so smooth and simple on the websites 2 minute example video. What liars!
We were told to wait 15 minutes between the drop and the pull. Unfortunately we took over 15 minutes to drop the three pods so as soon as we were done it was time to go back and pick up pod 1. Where is the relaxing? Pulling in the pod was a whole new challenge as I had to drive close enough for Scott to hook the line but I couldn’t run it over, also the water was moving downstream at a pretty fast rate so I have couldn’t just pull up and pop the boat in neutral. There were many rounds of misses before Scott pulled in the first line. I held my breath, at this rate we would have limited attempts before we had to return the boat.  

Yayayayya, the pod had about 12 crab at the bottom. We were so excited, unfortunately there were no keepers but it was so much fun we could live without dinner. That’s when I looked down at the bottom of the boat, then to the hubby and realized both were covered with watery bait and crab yuck. There was no way we were enjoying my picnic lunch on this boat. C'est la vie.

 

We actually were much faster by the second and third cast. The crabs were plentiful but not the size we needed to keep for dinner. Around pod 6 we pulled up the first male that was large enough to eat and we were thrilled. At the end of the day we caught three males which the boat rental staff steamed and cleaned for us. We placed them in a bucket of ice and let them chill. Once we returned to the hotel we made a salad of tomato and avocado and cracked those babies open. As you can imagine we were hungry after such a long day of work with no lunch break.

 

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