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So what is all the fuss?
You may be visiting the Oregon Coast and wondering what the deal with crabbing is. My second trip to the coast was with my youngest son, then 9 years old. He had seen a brochure at one of the hotel lobbies and was bugging me to try crabbing. We stopped at a roadside seafood place just south of Siletz bay, the vendor was obviously an expert on seafood , he recommended Alsea Bay in Walport. Waldport was close to our hotel in Yachats, so we ventured to the marina.  |
 At the marina was a store where you could rent nets, buy bait and get some good advice. It overlooked the docks floating in the bay just below the store. The couple running the store rented us a net and sold us some mink and chicken, along with some twine to tie the bait. We also had to get a license good for 3 days for $9.00. We headed to the dock and soon realized we were missing a few things, first something to sit on! Once you get your net unwrapped and your bait tied into the bottom of the net (some nets have a cage for putting the bait in also), you toss in the net and wait. We came when the tide was coming, the best time to crab. You can get tide charts for a quarter at the dock. We had no luck for a couple hours, as we saw other people catching their limit. |
 Finally we got our first catch! It was so exciting, my son was in heaven. We had to measure with a special ruler for measuring crab. Our first catch fell short, but it was exciting to see the net full of big and small crabs. Getting them out of the net was a trick too, but after a while we got better at it. One lady stopped by and told us to pick them up by the back legs like a scissors, and sure enough it worked. We got a our first taste of crabbing. We tried again the next day and finally caught a few keepers. |
The next time we came, the whole family had come along, my wife was hooked after the first net full of crab. We boiled them at our campground that night. She wanted to go a step further and rent a boat, the same marina rented a boat for the day for $50.00. So we got a map of the bay and dropped our nets with buoys around the bay and slowly trolled around following them with the tide. We found this to be much harder and not as relaxing. You can spend hours relaxing on the dock and watching harbor seal pop up like submarines, watching for stray pieces to snack on. The boat was hard to balance and you had to keep moving. We caught a few keepers, but definitely an adventure! |
 Our next trip we felt like pros, my oldest son then 14 and a neighbor boy had made the trip with me. We spent several days on the dock . We had warm days in August and little rain. We ended up with over 20 keepers and cooked a bunch at our campground. One of the other campers, a family from Portland was amazed at the catch, so we invited them to our first attempt at night crabbing. We headed down the Docks to find a few people there, We plopped the net in with some chicken bought from the grocery store up the road, you got a lot more chicken for the money. But be prepared to figure out how your going to split up frozen pieces.  |
All in all, if your looking for something fun and relaxing, try crabbing. We have tried in Winchester Bay and Charleston. There are many other places along the coast, so wherever you end up, get yourself a net ,some bait, twine (more than you think you'll need), a bucket, some foldable deck chairs, a cooler of snacks and drinks and enjoy the day on the docks. Don't be surprised to find people from all over, we met couples from Idaho, Oregon, California. We also had someone spying on us the whole time... Information on Alsea Bay crabbing. |