I caught crabs on the Oregon coast — at least that's what my T-shirt says. And it's true, what a memorable and remarkable camping and fishing adventure to experience. It was somewhat challenging and required a little bit of luck, but it provided memories to last a lifetime.
We camped in a nice RV park and marina. The lots were spacious, paved and nicely landscaped. The convenience of being so near the marina proved to be helpful in answering our myriad questions pertaining to crabbing and purchasing the supplies we needed for crabbing.
After checking in and setting up at our campsite, we walked over to the marina to make the arrangements to crab. First of all, we purchased our three-day fishing/crabbing licenses.
Crabs can be caught off a dock or from a boat. The technique for both ways is the same, but the bounty is usually better from a boat, so we opted for the boat, renting a 14-foot aluminum fishing boat. We were given instructions to stay in the river and not go out into the Pacific — and to stay out of the shipping lanes.
The equipment needed is crab traps with long ropes or chains attached, buoys to mark your traps, bait and a container to put the caught crabs into (we used a cooler with a lid). I also strongly recommend you wear rain suits and boots because you are definitely going to get wet, along with thick rubber gloves to protect your hands from the crabs' pinchers.
There are two types of crab traps: rings or baskets. The boat rental provided us with three ring traps, but we also had basket traps that we borrowed from friends. The basket traps worked better for us.
To fish for crabs, you simply place the bait (raw chicken pieces or fish parts) into the little bait box in the crab trap. Drive the boat along the river, and throw the crab trap into the water to rest on the bottom. Drive further and drop another crab trap, continuing until all the traps are dropped.
By the time we had all the crab traps dropped, it was time to go back to our first one, marked with a buoy, to pull it into the boat. It took some muscle to pull the traps up — not only because of the weight of the crabs, but also because of seaweed entangled in the trap.
With gloved hands, we had to grab the crabs at their backs so they wouldn't pinch us, and pull them free from the traps they were clinging to. It took a lot of arm/hand strength to do this. We also had to occasionally protect our catch from the many seals swimming all around us.
Even though the crab trap is full of crabs, not all are keepers. Some are too small because they have to be 5.75 inches or larger, measured across their back shell. Also, only the males can be kept; all females have to be thrown back.
How do you tell a male crab from a female? You have to look at the "belly." The male's underside has a longer, narrower design to its shell; whereas the female's underside design is rounder and wider. (Unfortunately, this seems to be true in the human species as well.)
After our success of catching the Dungeness crabs, they had to be cleaned. Though the marina offered their services of cleaning and cooking our catch, we chose to do so ourselves.
The two onsite cleaning stations proved to be convenient for this task. Using the corner of the cleaning table, the crab shell is pulled away from the body. Next, the bodies are broken into halves, lengthwise. Under running water, each half is rinsed thoroughly and any attached organs are washed away, saving only the crab legs.
After cleaning, the crab legs were placed in boiling water, which we did back at our campsite using our propane turkey fryer. Once the water returned to boiling, we cooked the crab legs for 10 minutes. We placed the cooked crab legs in a clean cooler, pouring cool water over them for easier handling.
Now, we could dig in and enjoy eating our catch. We also packaged the cooked crab legs for freezing for later use.
Catching Dungeness crabs on the
