Aborted Crabbing Trip

We were planning another crabbing trip to Pacifica Pier this past Sunday, being the non-religious folks that we are.  We were pleased to discover that the fish monger at our farmer’s market sells heads and scraps at $1-$1.50/lb which far beats the price on chicken so we bought our bait there on Sunday morning.  We didn’t get around to checking the fishing reports until after the market and lunch.  They day was proceeding quickly and we wanted to verify the conditions before making the commitment to going.  The fishing reports said that folks were catching 2-3 dungies per pot for an overnight soak.  That did not bode well at all for a potential ~4 hour soak with a hoop.  So we now have nearly 3 lbs of fish heads in the freezer and will have to suck it up and travel further north.  Some friends were going to Fort Bragg to dive for abalone.  We checked the fishing report there out of curiosity and it seems it’s doing a bit better.  Since the crabs tend to only go about as south as Santa Cruz, it’s not entirely surprising that as the season wraps up that we’d start to see the fishing migrate more north.  With Fort Bragg being 3.5 hours north it didn’t seem reasonable for the day trip we were planning.  So we’ll have to plan a bit more in advance and seek out more northern piers at this point.  The idea has been thrown out there about crabbing in Washington State in July if at all feasible.  We’ll have to see how that goes though.