Hood Canal during shrimping season
Question: Did other people notice that the shrimp were deeper this year than last? Any ideas why? One idea we had is that maybe there's more oxygen in the Canal this year, so the shrimp aren't crowding into the shallow areas. For those of you who haven't ever taken the opportunity to catch your own shrimp in Hood Canal, here's a brief recap of how the recreational season works: you can have pots in the water from 9 to 1 pm. Shrimp season opens the first Saturday in May and continues the following Wednesday, the second Saturday, and then the second Wednesday. It's a four day season, so there's lots of pressure to catch your limit of 80 shrimp per person per day. For more info on regulations visit the WDFW page here.
No shrimp, no smile
Note: this was a recreational shrimp opening, not a commercial one, so we don't have fresh Hood Canal shrimp to sell.
We kept to Frenchman’s Cove. It took us until 12:30 but we almost limited out between 5 of us. It appeared to us that there were not nearly as many boats this year for Opening Day and we thought we would limit in a couple of hours. Not! The largest pull we had was 36….one pull had nothing but a flounder in it. Our pots had 300 feet of line….we dropped at different depths between 175 to 250 feet. Probably our imagination, but we thought the shrimp were not a large as last year either. Plan to give it another shot Wed. Good luck!
Well, it looks like next year we might go with 400 feet of rope, just to be safe. Lost pots are a bad thing all the way around. Most of the people who caught shrimp last Saturday did so at 300 or 350 feet. Our shrimp seemed big enough, but they definitely aren’t as big as the prawns we buy from the Coast. Good luck tomorrow!
I went out with a buddy yesterday morning—he did not have a shellfish license and that worked out because with 4 pulls we got 64 of those bad boys. We went farther down the cove from our place and we were about 250 to 270 feet. On the second pull, the trap was really really heavy. Visions of a mega shrimp haul! Then after several minutes of pulling we see an old barnacle encrusted crab buoy attached to a yellow line. OK! An old crab trap we thought. Turned out to be a trap…but it was a real nice shrimp trap. The bait container was full of broken clam shells. It was all crusty and had been down there a long time.
Back at it Saturday!
Apparently all the shrimp are on your side of the Canal… a friend of ours went out shrimping near Holly and had 300 shrimp in one pull!