The pot puller sounds cool. Can I use it to retrieve a 32# Columbia River anchor :p

Can you teach me how to get a season? That particular technique is a problem for me right now. The boat is ready, my appetite is ready, all I need is a season. I missed last year's, must have been out of town that week. and

I have watched the Area 8.2 crab season dwindle from 10 months out of the year to last year's 3 or 4. I used to joke about the 3 or 4 DAY Hood Canal shrimp season, but the trend for Area 8.2 crab seems to be moving in that direction. What's ironic is that the effort for the Hood Canal shrimp fishery is really intense over those few days, and you gotta wonder if the same amount of harvest couldn't be spread out over say 8 weeks. It's certainly a crazy and sometimes dangerous fishery when it is going on, what with so many boats trying to launch and retrieve at so few ramps.

What do people think about a voucher system, where you get 20 vouchers for crab per year, and you can use them whenever it is convenient, instead of cramming it all into a short period, then packing up your boat or at least your crab gear until the same time a year from now? What's really frustrating for me is to have someone come visit us and me having to explain that we can't go catch some crab for dinner, not because they are scarce or molting, but because of the artificial WDFW season-setting. If I had vouchers, I could use them when it made sense for me, not when it was convenient for WDFW from an enforcement standpoint. The whole "ease of enforcement" thing is a joke anyway, because if my intent is to break the law and poach, there are a million ways for me to avoid the checker at the ramp. The checker ends up taking my word for truth anyway when they ask if I was crabbing/fishing/shrimping, so they might as well trust me to use my vouchers appropriately.