School me on Shrimping

[PsoasHunter]

I hit the lottery, my buddy bought a boat!  We're planning on going after spot shrimp on Saturday and I've been reading a lot, but have some questions I think this group would have answers too.  I appreciate any info y'all can share.
First, a little info on us.  The boat is a 17.5 foot boston whaler type boat, no cabin, fairly open, low sides but wide and stable.  He's in navy reserves and very experienced on the water, I've been in a lot of boats in lakes but not much on the sound. We've got two pots w/ 400' of line and 10 pound weights for each. I know we can have 4, but they're too expensive to get in that deep on our first trip out, and I'm hoping to find more used for next year.   

Here are my questions:

1.  Hood Canal vs San Juans?  Hood canal is a little further drive but water and currents are calmer and don't have to motor as far to get to shrimp.  Weather on Saturday looks a little questionable for bigger water in the San Juans.  From what I've read about the San Juans,  it looks best to be out near Lopez Island in bigger water, but current and wind can get ugly, which sounds like a lot for a couple of guys on their first trip.  Anyone have experience fishing closer to anacortes or around Cypress or Sinclair islands, where it might stay a little more protected?  Am I overthinking the current conditions and we'll be fine in a boat that size further out?

2. Timing: I've heard the boat launches can be a zoo, and to get there early.  We have no problem going early, it's our preference.  For those that launch on the morning of, what time do you get to the launch?  How long of a wait are we looking at?  Any advice on which boat launches would be best for hood canal?  how about for the San Juans?  We're both very experienced w/ launching boats and the headaches that you can find at the launch, we're not those guys.

Thanks for any advice, knowledge, and encouragement you may have.  Either way, we're going to have a blast getting outside and on the water.

[Limhangerslayer]

Go hood, you’re kinda under gunned for the San Juan’s.  We shrink from 360-440-460ish with pot pullers

[Jake Dogfish]

 
Hood Canal.👍

[huntnphool]

 Are you planning on pulling by hand from 300’+?

[WapitiTalk1]

Had to do it    Good luck in your endeavors sir.

[Stein]

Look at the wind forecast for San Juans on Saturday, it's a firm no go for us.  You don't want to be up there in a 17' boat when it's blowing 20 gusting to to 30.

Regarding launches, well, everyone plans on getting there early so plan for that.  It all depends on the launch you use how big of a zoo it will be.  For the areas only open one day it's incredible.  For the rest, it's a half step below incredible.  If you want to avoid crowds you would have to put the boat on a ferry and launch from up in the islands.  This year was probably 50-100% more than any other year I have shrimped in the last 20 years or so for where we go regarding number of boats at the launch.

I'm not too familiar with the Hood Canal launches, I've only shrimped there once and we launched the night before and anchored it outside the air BNB we were staying at.

Make sure you weight your pots and have good floats.

It's fun but the launching and retrieving are by far the hardest part unless you have the boat in the water already.  If you can swing overnight moorage, anchor off the beach or something like that it can really take the unfun part out of the equation.

[spoonman]

I shrimp the canal a lot and do very well. I launch at the hood canal bridge and run south. We fish right across from Bangor  in 200-300 FOW. Get there a couple hours early and if your boat has a good fish finder you can see the shrimp on the bottom. Good bait and dropping your pots on them is the key to a successful day of shrimping. The light blue clouds just off the bottom in the pic are shrimp.

[fishngamereaper]

Plenty of places on the canal to launch...salsbury is a good launch, plan to run for 30-40 minutes to get a shrimpy area..Misery pt is an ok launch. Ramp sucks at tides lower than 4'.  You can shrimp right in front of the launch though. Any place you launch will require an at the latest 6am arrival, preferably 4-430.

Plenty of places to shrimp...any fresh water outlet will hold shrimp.

Depths are where you find them. 180-400'. Bait is key. Oily, smelly is best. We use a combo special mix of cat food and tuna scrap's/ oil.

Get on the water early enough to search...some people blind drop. I need to mark shrimp before I drop.

[blackpowderhunter]

I think people underestimate the straits weather wise, so definitely don't do that.  Depending on where you are launching from, the run out to the islands can be sporty depending on your boat.
The tides look relatively mild this weekend up there though, but if the wind is bad, it gets bad out there.  I've never shrimped hood canal, mostly up in the san juans.  In my opinion it's a better overall experience as you can make it a full day adventure, not constrained to time frames (other than daylight), and it's just a fun area.
With that said, heavy, weighted pots and BIG buoys are necessary unless you feel like losing them and waiting for the next tide change and hoping they pop up where you lost them.
My pots weigh 38 lbs each and I run 3 regular yellow buoys plus one large inflatable yellow. 
Don't just follow the crowds of people, use electronics, look at the maps of the bottom and find some for yourself.
This year we were well off from the normal crowds up there and got 5 limits on the boat 4 days in a row with plenty of time to ling fish and run into friday harbor for lunch and a beer.
Go, be safe, have fun, and don't let the crowds at the launch ruin your day.
Coronet bay launch would likely be the closest for the san juans, it's right inside deception pass. 
If this is your first year, maybe hit hood canal for a learning trip, spend some time this summer in the san juans exploring and be ready for next year. 

[Rob]

As noted, don't underestimate the weight needed to keep your pot anchored in 400 feet of water!

I think this math is right... 

if you are using a skinny 3/8 inch rope in 400 feet of water - you probably have 600 feet of rope out.

3/8 = .375 inches
600 feet = 7,200 inches

so you have 2,700 square inches of surface area on one side of the rope (7200*.375).  That is 18.75 square feet of surface area. 

So essentially the surface area of that rope is like having a 4.33 foot x4.33 foot sail in the water.  If you have a 1 knot current, that will require a bunch of weight to keep it from moving!

[fishngamereaper]

Hammered them again today...

[RB]

I am not a salesman, but anyone new to the puget sound would be wise to buy the Saltwater Fishing Journal by John Martinis (5th edition is the newest). The book is a great reference tool for shrimping, and all other saltwater fishing. It will get you onto shrimp and there are some spots that are close to launches in the San Juans. I grew up here and have fished a lot around the sound and found it useful when I bought an earlier edition, a friend of mine picked up the newest edition and it has a ton of great information for new and experienced fishermen. Just got in from Lopez today, three limits before 10AM and the water was awesome!

Best of luck with the shrimp, and watch the weather the San Juans are spectacular, but a guy can get in trouble fast when the weather picks up. 

[OltHunter]

 

Lots of good info.

The only other thing I could add is look for 45 minutes to an hour max to check em and rebait. I do what John recommended for bait, pellets soaked in oil, cat food, chub mackeral.

Also, your pot needs to weigh 20 to 30 pounds at those depths. Get lots of bouys so if they do walk off you can go get them.

Keep an eye on current, any big tide change, I might not try to shrimp around the big currents.

I generally try to look for shrimp but usually just blind drop cause we're in the zoo of the 4 hour, 1 day at a time seasons.

We usually work the 250 feet range with 400 feet of line.

Got 4 limits today in 2 hours with 4 pots in area 9 outside of edmonds. Got 6 the last open day in May in area 10. Been a good season for us so far.

[Stein]

Today was incredible, flat water blue skies and shrimp all around.  Luckily we were done right when the wind picked up. 

I dropped two on clouds on the bottom and two in random spots, the two in random spots did a bit better.  Hitting a small target 200-300' down when the current is running almost a half mile an hour seems to be a tricky thing.  Luckily it didn't matter.  I was surprised how good the shrimping was at a very popular spot after it's been hammered already, seems to be a great amount of big ones this year.

[Rob]

We use to target shrimp with SCUBA off the mukilteo lighthouse.

At night they would come up above 200 feet.

We would drop to between 160 and 190 shortly after sunset.  The bottom was carpeted with big spot shrimp.  We would put a bag behind them and tap them on the rostrum with a stick.  This caused them to s oot backwards into the bag.

At those depths we would only have a 10 to 15 min bottom time given the deco gas we carried.  We never failed to limit.

The clouds on bottom finders are interesting.  We rarely saw a spots off the bottom-and when we did it was just 1 or 2.  Perhaps during the day and at depth they behave differently as your techniques seem to work!

We did notice the shrimp segregated by size and depth.  If we were finding small males, we would drop 20 feet deeper to find the females.

Fun fact...  all spot prawns are born male.  They become female later in life, all breed and carry berries around the same time and die shortly after loosing their berries.  So harvesting the large shrimp at this time of year has zero impact on sustainability.  Harvesting small ones has impact on future generations.

They seemed to favor smooth bottoms of sand or gravel.  Never saw large groups in rocks.  The coonstripes like rocks!

I seem to recall that pink shrimp suspend off the bottom but they were beyond our depth range.  We rarely found them.

Good memories!