I rec'd the following note today. It will be of interest to those of you who crab in MA 12 (Hood Canal).

The following is an update on the status of the 2009 Hood Canal crab fishery. Management plan negotiations for the 2009 fishery began in January of 2009 and after extensive discussions an agreement was reached to delay all fisheries until July 29 as a conservation measure to address the decline in crab abundance observed over the past several years. This delay is intended to retain all males in the Canal during the mating period which occurs May through July. Managers agreed the delay would only apply to the area south of the Hood Canal bridge and north of the bridge to Foulweather Bluff (area 25C) would open to all parties on July 1. Language describing the 2009 season and associated delay was circulated in draft 2009 management plans in early May. When draft plans were distributed disputes surfaced regarding what was and was not agreed to regarding delaying the fishery. In the end, the parties were able to reach an agreement for the 2009 fishery and the following schedule was secured in a signed management plan last week: The recreational fishery will open north of the bridge on July 1 and south of the bridge on July 29. The treaty fishery can open in all areas north and south of the bridge between July 15 and August 15 with a catch limit of 15,000 pounds. The treaty fishery will most likely open on July 15 and is projected to remain open for about a week. Although the treaty fishery can re-open after August 15, they are discussing staying closed until November. In my opinion, this schedule was a good compromise and has clear advantages for the recreational fishery. Thanks and good luck crabbing this year.

Here's a thought: since recreational crabbers ultimately contribute more money directly to the economy, why not let us begin on July 15 and let the tribes begin on the 29th? Is that rocket science?

I gave up 3 years ago. Pretty sad what is happening.

You can crab in Oregon virtually year-round recreationally. Yet my father told me the other day that nearly all crab purchased in Oregon at restaurants, fish markets, etc., is from Washington.

Of course I've known him to be full of chyt in the past (especially during my teen years), so not sure how viable that info is.

I didn't buy the PS crab this year. Last year I only caught one keeper. Gave it away to four folks in the MA12 out of Potlach. They only had one keeper as well.

Only mark on my harvest tag. Pretty pathetic opportunity provided by Staff at DFW.

i belive that the concern was that there was not much crabs in that area and that was why they were giving the crab some more time to procreate...just sounds to me that the tribes just wanted to get in early as usual...its so fun to watch the tribes fish/crab before our season even starts....nice job WDFW...c

Go ahead and spill the beans AuntyM, all the crabs that escape the commercials/tribes are well hidden in a Well known Bean Counting Oriface in Olympia

I am sure the pots with the yellow bouy's will be lined up just like last year come july 15th. Could not catch a keeper in the canal last year. Sad.
It was the first year they had that many comm pots down by my grounds. A comm bouy every 150 feet at about 100ft depth (six pots on each bouy) the whole length of our area. Pretty tough crabbing when they have two weeks to take all they can with thousands of pots. Everyone there knows it was fished out. Nothing but females and soft shells. Hopefully better this year or the $ brought in by us sport crabbers will start to drop. Probably take that to get some change in this state.

Probably be worth it to pay someone to monitor when they get to 15,000 lbs. Is that a typo? Doesn't seem like much, I bet they go over & no one will watch.

Seems as though a few years back we decided to "tax" ourselves and get a crab count so that we could get a more equitable crab allocation. I have yet to see these numbers and WDFW has buried the information that came from years past,(remember Koenings and the acting director were there and let this continue).One reason we need fresh blood in that Directors position and we need to force the issue about the crab count, or give us back our money.
This should become an issue very soon.....


Fishy

the one other thing that you have to remember is that there are a quite a few people that live on the canal and over fish themselves...they just busted a guy on my route last year for getting too much crab...i think they found him with over 100 from what i heard...so that is a problem also...c

but yes the tribes over fish...and i have heard on a few occasions people going to Hawaii and ordering dungie crab and getting a small female...nice, i wonder where they get those crabs?...no haha...c

It is my "Belief" that the arrogant WDFW spent those CRC Dollars for a lot of things besides what the Legislation limited them to. And that Legal Limitation was very specific, i.e., establish a "Counting System (with some degree of integrity)", Count The Sports Caught Crab, and Use the Numbers for allocation purposes. That is the "Why" of a Performance Audit that is NOW THREE YEARS OVERDUE!!!!!! All you have to do is query the Legislature's own database on "Who" Contributed to "Whom" and you automatically understand why Sonntag is sitting on the Performance Audit cause it looks very bad for the democrats in the legislature who took the MOST dollars from the Commercial Crabbing Interests. And that "MOST" was not just a "Little MOST" but a Lot of "MOST"!!!! Just look at the contributors (Who & How Much) to our Favorite Crook Jacobsen (and Hargrove).

(added on edit) The average "CRC Take" by WDFW is around $750,000 per year and they have NOT be able to account for one #%^& penny of it.