Originally Posted By: Take-Down

4. Overlapping with commercial crabbers (whether tribal or non) sucks. They lay huge lines of pots in the best areas, tend them actively, and generally just don't play nice on the water.

Last year was the first year I have ever experienced this in MA's 8-1 or 8-2. I thought they always wrapped (mopped?) things up prior to our ~July 1 opener.

The launch (Camano Island) was a total mess with recs attempting to launch and the tribal guys taking out and loading flat bed trailers with their 200 pots.

Unbeknownst to us we put our 4 pots in a string parallel to about 20 tribal pots (they were using a ground line with only the first and last pots having visible buoys). I wasn't looking forward to our first pull but we did surprisingly well...put some distance between us and them for our second set, and ended up culling 2 for our 20 crab limit.

Tip:
There were hundreds of big dead squid washing up on the beach, presumably tossed over by the tribal crabbers. We scooped up a bunch, stuffed our bait containers, and did really well with them. grin

Ike