Going Crabbing {by D}

Friday, 6 June 2014

Today I woke up to the smell of bacon. I got out of bed and went downstairs. My dad said we were going crabbing. I've never done that before. My expectation was that we were going to catch all shapes and sizes of crab. But when you're crabbing, it is illegal to catch more than ten per person. And it is, also, illegal to catch crab that is smaller than 7".

My second expectation was that we were going to ride in a big sail boat with a big crane that pulled up the boxes. But, instead, we were in Captain Dan's speed boat. And we had to pull the cages up by hand.

My third expectation was about the crab cages. I thought: this is going to be like the Blue Lake crayfish cages - just bigger. And I was correct!

After I finished my predictions we went out to the Wharf and met Dan at the docks. We found him on the road, pulling a cart full of fishing supplies. We headed down to the boat. Riley got to drive and I honked to the Coast Guard to show that we were ready to go out. Riley was already almost out to sea when a bunch of sea lions started barking at us. We had to steer around them.

When we reached the open ocean, Captain Dan started going really fast. The boat started to hydroplane.

We located the buoys and started pulling the cages up. While we were pulling little sand krill started jumping onto our boat. We caught 4 crabs in the first trap, 8 in the second, and 14 in the third. Then we stuffed all 26 crabs into our two coolers.

On the way back, we tried to fish for rockfish, but we didn't catch any. Then we headed back to the docks, unloaded all our gear, and went to the Wood's house where we ate lunch. Captain Dan calculated that we had caught $400 worth of crab! It was a fun day of crabbing.