We would like to invite everyone interested in shrimping, crabbing, and shellfishing to our monthly Puget Sound Anglers SnoKing Chapter meeting. It will be at the Edmonds Yacht Club on March 9 at 6:30 pm. We will be teaching the where and when of shellfishing. Food and drinks will be available. We will be raffling off one of the best pot pullers around. It is an EZ Pull pot puller from Cushman Boats in Hood Canal along with some pots and gear. You should come and join us. We are one of the fastest growing PSA chapters in the state. We have a lot of really good people in our club and they are a lot of fun. We just recently had about 25 members go to Sekiu for the Sekiu Derby. It was a blast. Come and join us. For directions go to our website and scroll down for the link of a map. http://groups.msn.com/psasnoking

I might have to check this one out to see if ya got it all right :p

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.

I will try and make it if I can slip away from work for a couple hours. Whats for dinner
Dan

We will be having hotdogs this month and possibly one tub of Spaghetti til it runs out. I am with you on the way the crab seasons have been mismanaged. After talking to the WDFW crab advisors, they said they would never open only one area at a time ever again. I was there Memorial Day in my home crabbing area last year of 8.2 and the other 10,000 boats. The Tulalip tribe was there with us too. Our PSA state board president is working on a stand alone catch card for crab. I don't know if you know how they do the crab counts or not. They do a phone survey of a very small percentage of people with catch cards. Then they average that into ALL catch cards. A lot of people don't even crab. What he is proposing is to have the stand alone card. There will be a small fee for it, but only people that have the cards will be counted towards our quota and not everyone else with a regular license. The reason for the small fee is because if they were free everyone would get it when they renew their license. This would defeat the purpose. This is one of the only ways we can see that we can show them we are not taking near as many as the tribes and commercials think we are. I cannot believe that everywhere you go you see tribal or commercial crab pots everywhere year round anymore. Every commercial buoy has at least 5 pots attached to it. Our measily little catch doesn't even make a scratch in the population, yet we are the ones that always pay back to the resource. I think the reason the current catch cards are not counted is because when they first got them back the counts were so low that the tribes didn't believe them.

The pot-puller is damn nice. I won the raffle for it last year and it really rocks.

The downside is that mine is back in storage for the moment. My brother and I were installing the brackets for it on his boat when we discovered that the wood bracing inside the fiberglass was almost entirely rotted away.

So much for that idea.

Fortunately, we're almost ready to get a new boat. We should have everything installed and be on the water by this fall. Anyone have any suggestions regarding brand? Due to our experience with fiberglass, we're looking into getting something aluminium.

Thanks for the insight, Ron. I will attend the meeting, and probably join the PSA so I can be part of the solution, instead of just biyatching about the problem.

Crabbing was what brought me into Puget Sound boating, and it saddens me to see that this wonderful wildlife activity is being mutated into something much more angst-ridden and troublesome than it needs to be. I remember the first time I saw a commercial crab boat come in loaded with literally thousands of crab, at a time when the season was closed for recreational harvest because of quotas. It made me think, WTF is going on here, why can these two guys go get a couple thousand crabs and sell them for a buck or two a pound, but I can't harvest 6 for dinner?
and
I would have brought the state a bunch more revenue by catching those crab as a sport fisher, than those two yokels brought in as commercial crabbers. They certainly didn't look like they were enjoying any financial success given the deplorable state of their boat, so who is benefitting? The crabber isn't getting rich, I don't get to crab so my boat sits in storage and I'm not buying gas/gear/etc., my kids are playing Nintendo instead of being out on the water getting some fresh air and exercise, I have to pay $5/pound to feed my out-of-town guests 5-day-old whole crab, so who wins?

I still think vouchers could work -- every time I go harvest some crabs, I sign and mail in a voucher that tells WDFW how many crab I harvested. There is obviously an element of trust required to make this work, but there is an equivalent, or maybe greater, level of trust in the WDFW checker asking me at the ramp if I was crabbing; it is up to me to tell the truth or not. I can beat the aerial survey by tying off 4 traps with 1 buoy. I can put some bogus name on the buoy in case it gets spot-checked. Poaching salmon is even easier -- I just wrap the fish up in plastic bags and throw throw them in the bilge when I retrieve, and tell the WDFW checker I struck out that day.

My point is that compliance with catch limits has to be on the honor system at some level. I believe that of all the casual or ignorant poachers that have time to think about or figure out what they have done and have the opportunity to do the right thing (send in a voucher), most will eventually do the right thing. Those that still don't do the right thing because they are just criminals will poach regardless of the compliance system, barring trained salmon-smelling dogs at every ramp.

The wildcard in this formula is when the compliance system becomes highly burdensome to everyone. At this point, some percentage of straight-arrow "good guys" become casual poachers, because they are pissed off about the burdens caused by the compliance system. They may start to high-grade halibut, they may "forget" to write in that blackmouth they caught, etc. I would argue that choking down the crab season to 3 months per year while simultaneously allowing a few commercial crabbers to harvest tons of crab, is highly burdensome to everyone.

Man Fishnut, all I want to know is where did you and Slabquest get those shrimp.

[img]http://groups.msn.com/_Secure/0VgDnAsQZ62YZmUOZDTWNVdGNIO3wPy2N7g6bMaE9qKp3DvJV*vex2GFVCFD4IBaziu1AWlEWKFPno6pedNND*KAR7cQQQVEvFoOytP5qKDp9!wGxupwsGbsD5jhjslQV/Shrimp%20poster%20030904.jpg?dc=4675460760523086811[/img]

I thought Baseball had a problem with steroids!!

We got these shrimp at %$#*@* hole. You will have to use your secret ovaltine decoder to break the code!!!! Good Luck

One of the biggest questions that the Shrimp Board wants to know for our area Marine area 8 and 9 are the seasons. They want to know if we would rather have them go the four days a week (Thursday-Sunday) or two days a week, to make the season last. I have taked to many people and have only one person say-4 days so we can get it over. This is not a reply I would expect to hear for a quality recreational sport. The seasonal quota will not change. Last year Edmonds(area 9) lasted six shrimping days, Everett (8-2) lasted seven. What is your opinion. Two days a week or four?

Hey isn't that the guy who won the Sekiu Derby?

Took my first shellfishing trip of the year Saturday, to one of the few Hood Canal beaches then open for clams and oysters. I believe several others are now open, as of March 1. Anyway, no problem getting nice clams (Manila, littleneck and a few butters) and oysters on a plus 1.5 tide. Had not been to this beach, an old favorite, for seven or eight years and was glad to see it's doing fine. Can't wait for crabbing to open.

Have pot puller....need a season.. 4 days is not a season!!!!!!!!!!

I like the voucher idea.

Periwinkle-So you are answering with a 2 day a week or 4 day? Read above why the voucher system will not work or actually be accepted. Flat out the WDFW says they do not have the funding to watch everone the whole time. That is the reason everything has seasons on it. In a perfect world the voucher system would be great. Heck, they wanted to do away with non spot shrimp seasons all together. We told them no. You never let them take anything away as you will never get it back. Non spot seasons used to last forever. Last year they closed right away so they wouldn't have to monitor it. AS spot shrimp goes away I was thinking of coonstripe shrimping. Like you I bought an expensive puller and need to use it.

Isn't it really about the desire to have human bodies onsite to witness everything, instead of trusting? Without getting into a political debate, it seems to me that as the degree of oversight and bureaucracy goes up, so does the populace's cynicism and disrespect. Not that I act on any of them, but I still find myself thinking of all ways I could bypass the heavy-handed enforcement of things like crab take, because of the us-vs-them atmosphere engendered by the enforcement. If it were up to my own sense of right and wrong, I would feel a lot better about following the rules, instead of just feeling lucky that I didn't get busted for some violation after getting grilled by the checker. I would contend that the people that plan on keeping too many or out-of-season crab/salmon/whatever will do so regardless of the enforcement, barring a manned checkpoint and strip search between every ramp and parking lot.

I would also contend that packing a season like Hood Canal shrimp into a few days creates a manic sort of festival atmosphere that draws people to an activity that they otherwise might just ignore, if it wasn't seen as such a Big Deal. I'm sure you have seen the MasterCrafts and bass boats out there in Hood Canal shrimping. What if you were allowed to catch 160 spot shrimp per year, and you could go harvest them anytime you wanted to? I bet you would have a much lower total take, because it's no longer a Big Deal. Who would drop $500 on a pot puller for 160 spot shrimp per year anyway? Why bother taking the MasterCraft over to Hood Canal? It's no longer about enjoying the activity, it's about being part of the Big Deal. "Yup, we did the Hood Canal shrimp fishery last year -- both days in fact."

Even now I see people talking about hitting area 8.2 real hard in July as soon as it opens, because you never know when WDFW will shut it down this year. Now you're in a crazy death-spiral of ever-shrinking seasons. I predict an early September area 8.2 "emergency" crab closure this year.

There are precedents for yearly limits -- sturgeon for example. Why not cram the whole sturgeon season into a single month, to ease enforcement? Come to think of it, why does crab and shrimp require such a heavy-handed enforcement protocol, but not sturgeon? Maybe it is because sturgeon is not a Big Deal. You can go harvest them pretty much whenever you want to. There's no rush.

I don't have all the answers here, I'm just saying that the contracted seasons have serious 2nd and 3rd order fiscal and social effects.

F-nut........ I was thinking more of crab than shrimp. But why couldn't the Dept. sell 10-15-20 voucher (permits) whatever and you have to date and attach them to your floats???? How hard would that be to enforce? One fish checker (already paid) in an inflatable w/ a fast outboard.. (make a $500 penalty for violators)
Finegrain and I could choose when to use the vouchers. Charge an extra$5 for the tags if necessary..

Well to answer your question on the crab, that pretty much is what the stand alone catchcard will represent. You only get one if you pay extra. This will keep everyone from just getting one when they get their license for free. If they get a shellfish license this card it will not be included and will be for crab only. Our Puget Sound Anglers State Board president is the one getting this through. This will mean that the only crab counts will be for the ones that buy the card. Right now the formula is spread across all catch cards which is very inaccurate, This will hopefully be the cure. I don't like our short seasons either. It gives you a reason to go out in the boat when fishing is closed.

Picked up the new raffle grand prize for the Puget Sound Anglers SnoKing meeting on this Tuesday March 9th. It is a really nice all aluminum framed puller with an electric motor. The gearcase is oil bath sealed unit. It has the bigger motor on it and comes compleat with the pulley at the end and mounts. This is upgraded from the one I ordered. This is about an $800.00 puller. It is really nice. Come and see if you can win it on this Tuesday at 6:30 (March 9th) at the Edmonds Yacht Club, behind Anthony's Homeport on the Marina side (same building) see you there.

Amen! This is the trend I have been complaining about for years.... Look at the halibut zoo in the summer, Lake washington sockeye, the canal shrimp, sekiu king season, and many more I cant think of a the moment... all have become a circus atmosphere because we all know they are going to close them quick. Its nice an convienent for them, thousands of people all in one spot, easy to monitor. Cant write the tickets fast enough....THATS BECAUSE THEY HAVE DRAWN EVERY WACKO OUT OF THE WOODWORK WITH THE HYPE THESE SHORT SEASONS DRAW! Its getting harder and harder to find anything that overlaps anymore... it was nice to be able to put out a couple of crab or shrimp pots before you head out to catch salmon, or get a halibut and some salmon in the same trip. Those days appear to be gone, because wdfw cant get creative with enforcement. Everyone has to do more with less these days. If any other business out there tried to keep giving their customers less while charging them more, they'd go under. Maybe a complete overhaul is what is needed.