Any crabbing report from Astoria or Tillamook?

[Pilar]

Hi Ocean. My info is a week plus old. We crabbed T bay on the 19th before the big rains and did well with 2 limits. The crabs were down towards Kincheloe Pt. and the rip rap across from the shiprock.

It was surprising to see so little fresh water in the bay then.

You will probably have to wait until this weekend for good water. The best bet now is Netarts, it gets very little runoff. Make that Plan 'B' for crabbing with Plan 'A' being Tillamook bay. If it is blown out just cruise over to Netarts, just a few miles away.

Make sure to bring your own bait. The bait is scarce in Garibaldi. You can get halibut trim at Food 4 less or cheap whole chicken. Either will work well. If you have bait cups you can use squid, it works really good. Or you can pick up cockles on the low tide. Crushed in a bait cup they work like nothing else. Natural feed and choice of commercial crabbers.

Let us know how it goes and happy hunting.

[Ocean]

Greetings:

I am planning to dig razors on Tuesday or Wednesday and would like to get some crabs on the way down. Has anyone been out recently? Is Tillamook completely blown out? What about the Columbia?

Any information will be greatly appreciated.
Regards,

Mark

[Ocean]

Here's the crab report.

We crabbed Netarts at low tide and incoming down by the mouth. We not as many crabs, but most were good sized ocean crabs. There were more females then I have seen in quite a while, and several females were very large. Crabbing above the first sand spit (just above the seals and sealions) was also productive, but the crabs were smaller.

Fairly good crabbing in Tillamook bay yesterday (Thursday). Averaged two + legal crabs per pull. We didn't leave the pots down long. Very few large crabs, most were within 3/4" of legal size. Most crabs were very firm, less than 10% were soft. Got two limits in about 1 1/2 hours.

For bait I use a turkey leg and a shad chunk in the bait cage and a mix of chopped squid, chopped salmon scrap and chopped herring in a scotty bait cup.

I have aways wondered if smelt would work so I used some of last year's frozen smelt in one pot. Didn't work at all. Caught few crabs and no large crabs.

We clamed at Long Beach last night. We got a late start and it took about 1 1/2 hours to get limits on the incoming tide. It was a very pleasant evening; no rain, the moon was out and it wasn't very cold.

Back to work today. Regards,

Mark

[ 02-01-2002, 10:37 AM: Message edited by: Ocean ]

[RIPPLE]

I was curious about smelt for bait as well and tried it about a month ago. Same result, NO LUCK!
:grin: RIPPLE :grin: