On Sunday December 5th two buddies from work and I headed out to Area 9 for some winter Dungeness. We arrived in the area near Possession Bar and set our gear among about 25 commercial pots that the commercial crab boat crew was in the process of pulling. It was discouraging but we were there so we gave it a try.

After about 4 hours and three pulls we managed 4 Dungeness and 8 or 9 red rock crab. From there we went to Brown’s Bay which is just north of Edmonds and we set our gear there, again among even more commercial pots. Thank you Washington State! We gave Brown’s Bay 3 more hours and 2 more pulls after 1.5 hr soaks and ended up with 9 Dungeness and 13 Red Rock crab.

POOR crabbing!!!!! I’ll bet both of the spots we crab fished would be great producers if they weren’t hammered by the commercial crabbers who once again are out there taking every last keeper off the Puget Sound sea floor.

Great day on the water, very calm water conditions, very cold (the propane heater worked like a champ) but all in all we had to work very hard spending way too many hours out there to get 9 Dungeness crab. The red rock crab were all nice sized but after cooking them one bite revealed a very foul taste which stopped me in my tracks. Unfortunately the ones I took home that tasted horrible were not edible. I haven’t asked my two fishin buddies if they experienced the same flavor yet but they all but 3 Dungeness and a few red rock crab were all cooked together. The Dungeness were fine but the red rock were not. Unfortunate for sure! Had there been a way to know, we never would have kept them.

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