Shrimp in deep water

Pilar · 04-09-2002, 08:18 AM

Does anyone out there shrimp in the ocean or anywhere else?

This is undiscovered country for me and my usual companions on the big blue lake.

'Puffin' has several traps and he has used them off Newport in several hundred feet of water. This year he plans on doing some shrimping at the rockpile (200 - 300ft.) and maybe even the dropoff at the Chicken Ranch. 600 - 700 ft!

A shrimp pot is a section of PVC pipe, a foot or so in diameter with wire entrance cones at each end. Add a weight and bait cage and make one end removable or add a door and you have a cheap trap. You can also buy them but the cost is high.

How much line should you use? How do you yard in hundreds of feet of line. Jon plans on pulling his with an anchor puller and a ball.

So where do you shrimp? On the bottom? Near a reef? I've caught black rockfish in pretty shallow water that were yarking up live shrimp. BTW this makes some awesome bait! Just talking about it with some friends, it is generally thought that the shrimp segregate by size. The deeper water holds larger shrimp or are they prawns?

What are the limit, species and size restrictions? What about a season?

So many questions. Does anyone know? Help us out.

Pitch Pocket · 04-09-2002, 09:44 AM

I just set up for shrimping in Puget Sound. Interested in the Oregon possibilties, I looked up the regs. Oregon allows 25 lbs. I called a guy at ODFW who wrote the book on commercial shrimping and he offered little encouragement. The main shrimping off the coast of Oregon is a 2-3 day round trip and it is trawlers taking salad shrimp in 700' of water. He said the regs were in place just in case anyone found shrimp recreationally. He knew of no real success by recreational shrimpers because of the difficult accessability. If you've found shrimp off the Oregon Coast, I'd explore it. It would be a coup.

In Puget sound, the shrimp lay on the bottom during the day in 275-350' of water (its dark). During the night, they come up to about 150' and feed on plankton. Shrimping in Puget sound is for the prawn (12-16/lb) and it's done on the bottom just like crabs. I have a pot puller (See cushmanboats.com) that pulls 100 lbs at 130' per minute. The trick in pulling shrimp pots is that if you stop, the shrimp swim out. Pulling with an anchor puller is ok, but by the time you get back to the pot 400' away (or more), you've lost some of them. Pulling by hand is done, but for me it's out of the question.

I'm planning on the Puget Sound opener April 20. They just changed to regs to 80 shrimp per person. It works out to be about 6 lbs. Not too bad if you have a family of 5. A good weekend will yield our family about 60 lbs of prawns. They freeze well and it would last us a while.

I bought commercial style traps in BC for $30 each (they are twice that in Seattle). WDFW regs say you can only have 4 per boat in so they aren't all that expensive if you happen to be up there.

rcl187 · 04-09-2002, 01:47 PM

SJP ~ Where do you go in the sound? I just 2 pots and 300' of rope - do I need more? Someone told me I'll need 30 to 40 pounds of weight, seems like alot but then again the current in Areas 6 and 7 gets pretty quick. I plan on hitting a few area's that I heard were good and then another out in the san juans that we went to for a marine biology field trip in november. Used a small trawl (12' x 4') and got an estimated 60,000 shrimp. This area was only 40 feet deep and we did the tow at 2:00 in the afternood so I want to try that again.

Myles · 04-09-2002, 02:36 PM

Never done it, but want to try. I bought a book " Evergreen Pacific Shellfish Guide" by J. D. Wade (WA resident) and it has a brief how to.
"Usually between 200-400 ft, 240 ft. is most productive, most shrimp move into the shallows at night. Use line at least 100 ft. longer than depth 7 to 15 lbs of weight. Best times: an hour before and after a slack tide."
The book seems faily useful to newbies. Although if it had descriptions on making traps, like you described it would be more helpful. I've been told the mesh openings vary from state to state so beware.

Myles

Pitch Pocket · 04-09-2002, 06:47 PM

It's my first time so I'm not sure yet. I've been invited to come up and be shown the "spots". I'm going loaded for bear with 4 pots and 425' of line per. We are going to the San Juans in July and I've got a spot picked out. Hope for success there too. Hoods Canal has a popular fishery that is just open a few days for a few hours. Check the WDFW site for more info.

I don't think it's too difficult and the commercial guy I talked to said it was just like crabbing...except 300' deep. He suggested 5-10 lbs of lead or rocks per pot. The best time would be slack during the 1/4 moon for least tidal movement. I can imagine the current taking these pots and sinking them.
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Hook-up · 04-10-2002, 06:58 PM

I fished on a charter in Alaska. We lived on the boat for a week and put out shrimp pots almost every night. They had a big hydraulic winch set up and I am not sure if the setup I am going to explain would work without the winch. My intent is to maybe save you some rope. They had a plastic garbage can with holes drilled in the bottom. It had 500'-700' of 1/4" rope in it. They tied a shrimp pot on the end and threw it over. Then we started to run the boat at about 7-8 knots to play the line out. Each of the other shrimp pots had a clip hooked to it. I have seen the clips at Fishermans Marine, I can not remember what they are called. They work like a big stainless clothes line pin. I think they were only a dollar or so each. They clipped the pots on about every 30'-50' or so. The end of the rope had 3 crab floats on it. They also put a short piece of cord (about 30" long) with a large circle hook (with a salmon head on it) on one end and one of the clips on the other and clipped them between the pots. We left them out overnight and caught several halibut, one was 110lbs. We set up in 200'-300' of water and caught 3 different size shrimp (prawns). I do not remember the traps being weighted but each pot weighted about 10-15 lbs or so. I do not think the circle hook idea would be legal here for recreational fishing but the rope set up may work and save some rope by not having to have a rope for each pot.

Pitch Pocket · 04-11-2002, 04:01 PM

Can't long line recreational traps in Washington. Each trap has to have it's own buoy. The commercial guys long line, but it's a definite no-no for us normal folk.

Not sure about Oregon. Would have to check.