Crabbing

There's something you should know.  Crabbing is pretty much the coolest thing ever.  Although, you should also know that the crabbing I did was nothing like Deadliest Catch.  It was not remotely deadly, and I really liked it that way.

We went to Taft Beach, which is just a couple miles from where we were staying in Lincoln City.  That's the official place to go crabbing.  The beach drops off pretty quickly, so you can cast into pretty deep water fairly easily.  (I'm sure there are other reasons why this beach is great, but that's the main reason that I was able to observe.  I also observed that I was able to catch a bunch of them, so there's that too.)

A friend of mine had loaned me the trap, so I took it to the beach and just did my thing.  There was a nice family who had been there crabbing all day and a couple teenage kids took me under their wing and taught me how to work the magic.

The trap is basically a net with a hook in the middle.   You put a piece of chicken (I used chicken legs) on the hook and you cast out the net.  It opens up on the sea floor and then when you pull it in the net closes up and catches anything that might be chowing down.  When you pull it out of the water, your job is to shout for joy at all the crabs you bring in.

It's not too difficult, but there was a little bit of a learning curve as far as figuring out how to aim your cast, figuring out how long to wait before pulling it in, and things like that.

The first time I cast it out, I pulled in one tiny precious cute little crab.  Naturally, I took a selfie with it.

At first, I was so excited that there was anything in the net, that I took a picture with everything I got.

As time went on, I either get better at it (what I like to believe) or just got more lucky (a very real possibility).  I brought in some pretty big hauls.  Like this one below.

Here's a video of me bringing in some goodness.

You'll notice that Robyn told me to throw them back after I pulled them in.  You are only allowed to keep males that are really big.  (There's a certain size they have to meet, but I don't remember what it was exactly.)  As my teenage friends were training me, one of the things they asked me was if I had a bucket.  I told them I was just there for fun and wasn't planning on keeping anything.  But I told them if I caught anything that was legal, I would give it to them.

It took me a good 90 minutes of casting the net, but I finally caught a Goliath sized one that was a full inch bigger than it needed to be.  I got a picture with it and then gave it to my little friends.

They were super excited about it.  They had been there all day (we got there in the afternoon) and they only had 2 so far.  Mine was bigger than the 2 they already had.

After I gave them the big one, they made even more effort to give pointers to other newbies.  I think they realized that helping others be successful was a good investment.  (But I should note, that they helped me out before there was any promise of reward.)

But don't worry.  Lest you think that I missed out on great seafood by not cooking up the crab that I caught, we went to Mo's which overlooks Taft Beach.  We had delicious seafood and we didn't even have to cook it.

Robyn wasn't very into the crabbing, but she was much more into eating amazing clam chowder while we looked out at the beach.

That's the last of my writing about Lincoln City.  But don't worry, there's more to come about the rest of our Oregon vacation.