Post by: PsoasHunter on June 01, 2021, 09:47:01 PM
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.
Post by: Limhangerslayer on June 01, 2021, 10:41:00 PM
Post by: Jake Dogfish on June 01, 2021, 11:16:02 PM
Hood Canal.👍
Post by: huntnphool on June 02, 2021, 12:00:15 AM
Post by: WapitiTalk1 on June 02, 2021, 03:02:41 AM
Post by: Stein on June 02, 2021, 05:06:37 AM
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.
Post by: spoonman on June 02, 2021, 05:35:46 AM
Post by: fishngamereaper on June 02, 2021, 05:59:43 AM
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.
Post by: blackpowderhunter on June 02, 2021, 06:53:20 AM
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.
Post by: Rob on June 02, 2021, 08:48:27 AM
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!
Post by: fishngamereaper on June 02, 2021, 02:34:23 PM
Post by: RB on June 02, 2021, 03:03:33 PM
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. :twocents:
Post by: OltHunter on June 02, 2021, 04:35:35 PM
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.
Post by: Stein on June 02, 2021, 05:41:11 PM
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.
Post by: Rob on June 02, 2021, 06:51:06 PM
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!
Post by: Taco280AI on June 02, 2021, 07:59:03 PM
Post by: Stein on June 02, 2021, 08:02:54 PM
All the floats are crushed to about 10% original size.
(https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20210603/6e1bb2d4f2eed07cc16303a211e32f2b.jpg)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Post by: wildweeds on June 02, 2021, 09:38:01 PM
1/4 cup olive oil,2 Tblsp lemon juice,3/4 tsp salt,1/4 tsp black pepper,1tsp Italian seasoning,1 tsp fresh chopped parsley, 2Tblsp minced garlic. Mix together , marinate shrimp 15 minutes to 2 hours (I do 45 min) skewer on bamboo , cook 2 minutes each side on barbecue.
Post by: PsoasHunter on June 02, 2021, 10:17:10 PM
Given the advice posted and my research, we're going to head to Hood canal. Seems like a better place to go for the first time and learn it.
So far there's been some good suggestions on launches up north. Anyone have any experience or advice for launching at skokomish/potlach or union and shrimping the south end? Looks like some deep water and shelfs just north of the bend, and then we could run up to a public beach in lilliwaup for some hama hama oysters while soaking :drool:
Post by: PsoasHunter on June 02, 2021, 10:20:07 PM
Are you planning on pulling by hand from 300’+? 8)
Everyone has to do it at least once right?! I've done a lot worse things for a workout without near the reward. I can't justify the money on a puller until we figure on whether this will be as addicting as all those other outdoor adventures that require too much gear. :)
Post by: treeclimber2852 on June 02, 2021, 10:35:49 PM
Post by: blackpowderhunter on June 03, 2021, 07:29:04 AM
if you're pulling by hand, note that YOU CAN NOT STOP.Are you planning on pulling by hand from 300’+? 8)
Everyone has to do it at least once right?! I've done a lot worse things for a workout without near the reward. I can't justify the money on a puller until we figure on whether this will be as addicting as all those other outdoor adventures that require too much gear. :)
once you stop, it relieves the pressure of keeping the prawns on the bottom of the pot and they will scoot right on out on ya.
Post by: Rob on June 03, 2021, 12:35:26 PM
Post by: carpsniperg2 on June 03, 2021, 12:45:34 PM
Post by: Stein on June 03, 2021, 12:56:58 PM
Post by: Rob on June 03, 2021, 03:39:35 PM
We figured out how to do one person harvest (after a year or two of trial and error including a guy who tried to build a powered sucker... he got a total of one shrimp!)
Setup:
on our right hand, we had a light mounted to the back of our hand and carried a short stick/pair of tongs/etc. In our left hand we had the bag that we could open and close with one hand (we found the spring loaded crab bags did not work well so just a large grab bag with the biggest hoop we could find).
the technique was:
1. Put the light infront of them and hold the bag open behind them.
2. They turn to focus on the light and when they do, take the stick and tap them on the nose. This would cause them to scoot backwards and shoot into the bag.
3. It is important to then sweep the bag forward as they go in. They hit the bottom of the bag and entangle in the other shrimp and holes in the mesh bag.
4. Close the bag and look for another one.
5. After bagging the shrimp, do a visual buddy check to make sure you are still in proximity of your buddy (at 180 feet it was super important to maintain buddy contact!)
Using this we could get one shrimp every 7 to 10 seconds.
Tips we found were:
A. Work into the current to avoid silting out
B. keep the bag a good 6-10 inches behind the shrimp. When the shrimp face the light, they put their antennae out behind them and feel around. If they touch the bag with the Antennae, the would scoot to the side of the bag rather than in the bag.
C. There was a point of diminishing returns on the bag. As the bag fills up with shrimp. it gets harder to sweep it forward and the shrimp start to escape when you open the bag. it helped to lay the bag out behind the shrimp in an L shape to trap them inside which you could do with a flick of the wrist as you brought the bag around. That point of diminishing returns was about 100 shrimp in the bag which was fine as the limit was 80 and we always had to release some when we got to shore.
D. I made a stick out of 1in PVC and I flattened the end like a spatula. I also found that painting it black was better than a big white glowing stick!
We saw people use salad tongs to pick them up and that worked, but we could outcatch them 2-1 or more with our light/bag/stick technique.
Post by: PsoasHunter on June 05, 2021, 06:02:32 AM
Post by: bear on June 05, 2021, 06:42:47 AM
Just got to potlach boat launch, we're the 3rd boat in line for the gates to open at 6. Nice to be missing the expected chaos of the launch!
Hope the water isn’t too bad today!
Post by: Stein on June 05, 2021, 08:22:07 AM
We went out yesterday evening, boated 3 greenling and I think I had a cabby on twice but couldn't stick it. Pulled the shrimp and headed home.
Post by: The scout on June 05, 2021, 09:58:27 AM
Post by: fishngamereaper on June 05, 2021, 02:34:57 PM
And a couple idiots where shrimping from paddle boards... :bash:. Took em over 20 minutes to hand pull with multiple stops for rest...
Post by: HntnFsh on June 05, 2021, 08:11:14 PM
Got to the launch a little before 5 and the hoards arrived soon after. Then about 7 there was no line. Weird! I was concerned about the weather thinking the wind and rain would make it tough but it ended up being a beautiful morning on the water. Probably a 1/4 of the boats out today compared to the last Saturday shrimp date.
Had about a 1/2 limit in each of the first 2 pots we pulled but made up for it with the last 2 pots having a limit and a half or so apiece. Ended up dumping about a limit and got back to the launch and on the trailer just as the wind got to whipping up some pretty serious waves.
Should have spent the night up there but got home about an hour ago. I'll sleep good tonight!
A little relaxation before pulling pots!
Post by: spoonman on June 06, 2021, 06:58:29 AM
It was actually a tougher day of shrimping for us than normal. Didn’t see much life in our normal spot so we moved and found some shrimp but not the usual limit or more per pot that we have been pulling in past years.
Post by: Rob on June 06, 2021, 08:02:26 AM
Post by: PsoasHunter on June 06, 2021, 03:38:04 PM
We learned a lot, harvested some shrimp, and had a great time overall with a few mishaps along the way.
First off, thank god for the strong recommendations on the canal, with the wind we had and the low sidewalls of the boat, we were taking on water all day. Here's the rundown for those interested.
Got to Potlach boat launch at 5:55, 3rd boat in line, with beautiful weather. Things were starting out great! Got onto the water smoothly and started scoping shrimp spots. We found a great shelf that looked promising at it was still 7:30 am.
With low tide at 9 AM, we motored further north to Lilliwuap and harvested 3 excellent limits of oysters. We had our first water in the boat here, as waves were crashing over the transom as I was getting into and out of the boat to get on/off the oyster beach. My friend has owned this boat for about 3 weeks, taken it on lakes, and doesn't have a bilge pump. As we're motoring away from the beach, back into the wind, we took some waves over the bow. Not great at this point. He's trying to explain to me how to reach under the motor to pull a plug to drain the bilge while were under way, and I "just have to put it back in before we stop". Not happening. But I got really good at bailing water with my wader boot and we were back in business.
Post by: PsoasHunter on June 06, 2021, 03:47:04 PM
After being the first on the water, we were the last with pots in, at the early time of 10:09 am, when many folks were coming out to pull their first soaks. Haha, we were just happy we actually got pots in the water at this point. We were also figuring out, after a few hours, how to drive the boat more effectively without taking on water over our very low boat, which was the biggest knowledge gained of the day.
In our excitement to see how we did and our impatience to stop getting thrashed in the wind, we pulled our pots after 45 min. I bought pots that are a little harder for shrimp to get into, because they're also much harder to get out of for the shrimp and we were to be pulling by hand. The bait suggestions worked, we had shrimp in our pots, and the day was looking to be much more of a success. Also, pulling by hand didn't prove to be the challenge I expected and was a nice workout. (Though my perspective may have been skewed by earlier trials in the day at this point)
Post by: PsoasHunter on June 06, 2021, 03:50:53 PM
I appreciate all the advice given here, it was spot on and crucial in our day being a success. It's what I appreciate about this community and I hope I can add more knowledge back in the future. Pics to follow.
Post by: PsoasHunter on June 06, 2021, 03:56:14 PM
Post by: PsoasHunter on June 06, 2021, 03:56:58 PM
Post by: blackpowderhunter on June 07, 2021, 07:00:07 AM
at the very least get a hand bilge for your buddy for taking you out.
the amount of coast guard calls i heard on the VHF for boats taking on water with an inoperable bilge pump on the opener in A7 was scary.
you'll learn more everytime you go, and once you get a good routine it becomes a lot easier and more fun.