Crabs, a day at the beach and one heck of a fireworks display! Truck loaded with two kayaks, enough fireworks to keep us busy for hours, the equivalent of weeks worth of gear (for one day at the beach…) and boat in tow we were off to the beach for a little crabbing, food, fellowship and fireworks. On arrival at Snee-oosh we staked out our claim and set up for the day. Site set up we launched the boat in anticipation of crabbing the area just south of Hope Island. Once out on the water we put out a string of 6 pots baited with salmon carcasses. The first drop was in 40’ of water and then approximately every 20’ feet of additional depth we set another pot until we were in around 120’ of water. My plan was to do a short test set and then move all the pots to the most productive depth.

The test set indicated that the 60-80’ depth range was the most productive so we moved most of the pots accordingly. Once on the crab each time we hauled a pot they were loaded with just undersize males so we had to wade through a lot of undersize crab to get 0-3 to legal males per pull. Although the crabbing was good, we ended up a few crabs short of our limits. We had red and white floats and licenses for 5 crabbers on board so could have retained 25 crabs but ended up with 20 or so crabs.

Enough crabs on board for my planned crab/seafood boil we headed in, put the boat on the trailer and got to work on dinner. Shrimp, crabs, sausage, potatoes and corn ready for a dip in a bit of seasoned boiling saltwater the stage was set for a great evening. The seafood boil being combined with other potluck offerings; BBQ chicken and desserts, everyone experiencing some level of food coma as we got to the fireworks.

The pyrotechnic display was crazy, between a number of the tribal fireworks stands that had headed to the beach to explode their overstock and the public it made for hours of intense firework displays. At our end it was a perfect end to a funtastic 4th.

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