Beginners Luck.
I went shrimping with a friend near Brinnon on the last day of Hood Canal season and knew I wanted to do it again.
When the Area 11 additional day announcment was made I asked long time hunting buddy Mike it he was interested in going and got an enthusiastic yes! We had found a trap supplier in Burien and got four complete set ups for $105 each, heavy 19# pot with 1/8" rubberized mesh on the bottom, bait container , 400' of leaded line, floats. and harness with stainless hardware.
After much research and getting helpful comments we decided to launch out of Gig Harbor and fish Pt Robinson area. I arrived at my Mike's house Tues eve to set up gear and load the boat for an early launch. We added 10 # of weight to one of mine and 12.5 to the other. Mixed up 6 cans of Friskies Ocean Fish with some crab/ shrimp oil and put a crab bait container with larger mesh to promote quick dispersement in # 1 pot to be dropped on the up tide location.
Mike is the owner of
http://www.harbordigitaldesign.com/flashextenders.aspx 
We got out of the Harbor before 6 and the Maxxum open bow ran at 35 mph @ 5K rpm. We quickly got to Pt Robinson and after looking around decided to head further N since the wind and waves were so low.
Three other boats arrived about the same time and we did some 'bottom scouting' and decided to stay here. Quite a few boats showed up and all seemed to work together well as no conflicts were noted. It was already a beautiful day and the tides seemed manageable for 300' drops.
We dropped the pots at the 7 AM start time, checked on one set of floats that was underwater even with 400' of line and were glad we had added boat fenders on tethers. We then moved a bit and shut the 2 cycle motor off to wait 45 minutes. The Force starter decided it wasn't up to the job and overheated. As we drifted toward the deep water Mike put a wet rag on the starter and I started to paddle to slow the drift. A couple calls on channel 68 and 16 didn't get an answer and things were looking dicey.
After we took turns paddling for a while a couple boats came by and the guy in the North River who was up there scouting out the area towed us back to our posts where I tied on the float to keep from drifting. The starter still wasn't turning over the motor so we pulled the first pot and got 16 - some were bigger than our hands. I talked with a guy in a camo open boat and explained our situation and asked him to bring our 3rd float to us that was 40 yards away.
We left the pots on deck thinking the batteries would not last long without the motor running our helper said he'd pull our 4th pot as it was 100 yards up tide from us but would not share in the 60 shrimp in there.
Finally, we were able to use an emergency pull rope along with the starter to get the 120 hp Force running. With that crises solved we dropped 2 pots to get the remainder of our limit and must have found the 'Spot spot' as they were loaded.
Counted and sorted into gallon zip locks and placed on ice.
It took 30 minutes to run back to GH and we had the boat on the trailer before noon.
So with all the drama a couple shrimp rookies managed to get some tasty shrimp on the bar b that evening.
