Prawnanza

[marula]

We took advantage of the open pulse fisheries today for prawns. Turned into a great day and no rain and few people out. It was a fast limit for us with the largest trap with 250 prawns !! Must have hit the right spot today. About 5 - 10% females with eggs, all returned including the smaller ones and excess prawns.


200 - 225 ft
Carlye Cat food and Prawn bait mixed and some with just a can of Carlye's
Two traps per set with 6 lb weight about 25 ' from the last trap.
2 - 3 hour soak.
Bauer metal wire sea traps


There is lots of females with eggs out there now . If any one is new to this, sort through them right away and toss the little guys, your over limit and the females packed with eggs back as quick as you can, drop them at the edge of the boat, don't turf them out as the seagulls with scoop them up and stay in the same area and depth so they fall back down the ground they can live on. I had a few tins of just Carlyes cat food with holes punched in, somehow they reached in and clean out the cans clean.

 

[muttley]

Nice work!

 

[Dogbreath]

What a haul!!!

 

[dmurph]

Good catch, and very detailed report, thanks.

 

[Orion]

Good haul for a short soak. Hoping to get out locally next weekend. Thanks for the info.

 

[FishBC.org]

Short soaks with those traps are awesome. Those are about the same results we were getting over here on a couple hour pull right before they closed it on us. Good haul!.

 

[Dave S]

We had a good pull today. We don't have fancy traps like these, but we managed to get 300 in a few hour soak. Pellets, salmon scraps, carlyes. We also enjoyed some time on a beach cooking smokies on a fire built by a friendly salty couple we met. Love this island life.

 

[walleyes]

Wow nice going,, damn those look tasty.

 

[Jockey]

I had similar results yesterday but where I was prawning we only got one female with eggs out of the hundreds upon hundreds of prawns caught. Some appeared to have eggs forming (orange goop in their head) but they were not there yet so we kept them. Must be the area I was fishing as I have noticed the lack of females there before. The prawns are also smaller on average than other areas where I usually intercept quite a few more females.

We worked really hard at crabbing (4 traprs, 3 sets) and only managed 5 keepers and a few were soft and probably should have gone back.

The big bonus of the day was the little Octo I caught. That will be sent to the bottom on March 1 and hopefully catch my first big flattie!

 

[TheSookesOfHazzard]

Awesome job Marula - From your photo's there I recognize those motors; I'm sure I saw you out there yesterday! Had a Explorer fly past me with that same power.

Yesterday was the first day I tried utilizing my anchor puller system that I usually use for Hali's for my traps. Call me lazy but it worked! Instead of the metal ring, I swapped for the sliding bolt design and rigged that to my Scotsman. The secret here is that your trap lines have to be clipped to your buoys and not fixed; unlike hali fishing you do not leave the system rigged up from the start. When I came to my traps, I simply grab the float, unclip the buoy from the line, and I feed the line through the anchor puller. The line is then fastened to the ski bar and the scotsman thrown overboard. The boat is pointed to deeper water and I idle away until the buoy starts to dive a bit. Turn around and voila - the trap is dangling and all you gotta do is gather the now weightless rope! I'm sure others have done this but I thought I'd mention it anyways as many of us already have the gear from our anchor set-ups, saves money spent on a motorized puller. It goes without saying that and line connections have to be spliced instead of knotted to fit through the puller.

Only problem I ran into was one lost trap . We didn't notice that the trap was at the scotsman and to hurry it along I applied a bit more throttle - at which point the carabiner that attached the trap to the line straightened itself out! Wow - at least my splice work is good! No lost rope, nothing - just the trap. From the three remaining traps we still got about 350 prawns from a few hour soak. Too bad though - the lost trap was in my killer spot!

 

[lucky strikes]

Hey Guys , What are the dates prawning is open from.......till close??

 

[marula]

Good eye Hazzard, that would have been us! Glad you did well.

Lucky Strikes, the openings are different in each area, check the regs here http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/fm-gp/rec/opportunities-possibilites/prawnclos-fermcrevette-eng.htm .