K
kayakwriter
Guest
Hi all,
Been lurking for a bit. I fish and crab out of my kayak, so most of my techniques don’t apply to the bigger boats most of you seem to use. But I thought I might be able to offer a (borrowed) solution to crab trap poaching.
In his book on catching crabs, Charlie White offers this idea. In the book, it’s demo’d with an educational and amusing cartoon. Here’s my thousand words to compensate for that one missing picture:
Use a floating line instead of a sinking line for the trap. Slip a few of those slide-on white foam floats onto the line. Slide them to the middle of the line, and secure them there with stopper knots at either end. Tie one end of the line to the trap. Weight the other end with a small anchor, a mesh bag of rocks, or whatever.
Drop the trap into place. Back off in your boat to stretch the line out a bit, then drop the weighted end. The buoyant line and floats will make the line form a submarine arch. You want to guesstimate the distance between trap and line end so that the apex of this arch is far enough beneath the water to be out of reach of props and prying eyes, even at low tide.
To retrieve your trap, troll at right angles to the line with a grapple (or the right sort of anchor) ‘til you hook it. In my older edition of Charlie’s book, he suggests noting a couple of “gunsight” references on shore (two objects lined up) when you set the trap that will guide you to do this when you return. I’m guessing in the age of super-accurate, WAAS-enabled GPS with real-time mapping, you could probably mark the locations where you dropped the trap and the line end, and get your right-angle run close enough on your return.
I haven’t tried this yet – I mostly fish for crabs on really remote trips – but I’m off to Port Hardy next week. Reading the other threads about the thieving has made me determined to try it if I’m going to be out of sight of my trap.
Cheers and happy, theft-free crabbing,
Philip
"Sail if you can - paddle if you must."
Been lurking for a bit. I fish and crab out of my kayak, so most of my techniques don’t apply to the bigger boats most of you seem to use. But I thought I might be able to offer a (borrowed) solution to crab trap poaching.
In his book on catching crabs, Charlie White offers this idea. In the book, it’s demo’d with an educational and amusing cartoon. Here’s my thousand words to compensate for that one missing picture:
Use a floating line instead of a sinking line for the trap. Slip a few of those slide-on white foam floats onto the line. Slide them to the middle of the line, and secure them there with stopper knots at either end. Tie one end of the line to the trap. Weight the other end with a small anchor, a mesh bag of rocks, or whatever.
Drop the trap into place. Back off in your boat to stretch the line out a bit, then drop the weighted end. The buoyant line and floats will make the line form a submarine arch. You want to guesstimate the distance between trap and line end so that the apex of this arch is far enough beneath the water to be out of reach of props and prying eyes, even at low tide.
To retrieve your trap, troll at right angles to the line with a grapple (or the right sort of anchor) ‘til you hook it. In my older edition of Charlie’s book, he suggests noting a couple of “gunsight” references on shore (two objects lined up) when you set the trap that will guide you to do this when you return. I’m guessing in the age of super-accurate, WAAS-enabled GPS with real-time mapping, you could probably mark the locations where you dropped the trap and the line end, and get your right-angle run close enough on your return.
I haven’t tried this yet – I mostly fish for crabs on really remote trips – but I’m off to Port Hardy next week. Reading the other threads about the thieving has made me determined to try it if I’m going to be out of sight of my trap.
Cheers and happy, theft-free crabbing,
Philip
"Sail if you can - paddle if you must."
