Anyone know how the rec catch in A-10 has varied over the last few years. My experience in 2018 was that the crabs largely disappeared from central A-10, and overall pressure fell off over the season since the crabbing sucked. 2017 summer and the short fall season in 2017 were really good, then the crab seemed to just vanish in 2018. Hard to believe there was rec over harvest in A-10 in 2018.
We are on the cusp of the 2019 season and WDFW Staff have yet to present their required annual report to the Commission on the prior year's crab season.
That is further hampered by the fact that the new and (not) improved website has dropped most of the historical Commission years so one cannot even dig through their prior meetings to find the annual crab reports. Available are meetings in 2017, 2018 and 2019 to current.
The 2017 recreational harvest in MA 10 (crab area 4) appears to have been around 50K pounds (page 9 of the report
https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/...resentation.pdf).
The 2016 recreational harvest there appears to have been right at 250K pounds (page 9 of the report
https://wdfw.wa.gov/sites/default/files/...resentation.pdf).
FWIW keep in mind that MA 11 and 13 were both closed in 2018 so it is reasonable to conclude that that caused some additional pressure on MA 10.
Edit: The next regularly scheduled Commission meeting is 2/3 August in Olympia. If Staff doesn't make a presentation during that session the next Commission meeting is 13/14 September in Winthrop - don't think those folks will be much interested in a P.S. crabbing report.
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