So the last time we had splashed the boat was July 7 th, that was almost two months ago. Due to family grieving, healing time and just life we missed the Marine Area 9 opener, the entire Baker Lake salmon fishery and who knows how many kokanee trips. Labor Day has come and gone but for the holiday we did a big family crab boil and crabbing day at the beach.

Better late than never; here is our report closing out the summer 2018 crabbing season in Marine Area 8-1. To assure that we got a handicap accessible picnic table at the Cornet Bay boat launch/park I launched the boat at o-dark-thirty, tied it up on the float and then then set up the table/picnic area for our Labor Day 2018 extravaganza. Still dark, my head lamp and I got busy reading a book while I waited for the rest of the troops and a hot cup coffee to arrive. The plan was to take turns running the crab pots while we socialized, goofed off and nibbled our way through the day. In that the gang was late and sans coffee we didn’t get the first set in until late morning.

Throughout the day we did three sets of two pots for limits around. We change the marker floats for each crabber as required so everyone got a chance to sort through a pot. The pots were baited with a mix of Cash and Carry chicken thighs and old salmon carcasses. We sorted through 100 or so crabs and only kept 7”+ hard shell males. For the last day of the season our haul was quite impressive. Although we set the traps in 35’ to 60’ of water, 50-55’ of water produced the most large males. Our last set of the day had multiple 8”+ males, not a bad way to close out the 2018 summer crab season!

In an effort to keep an eye on the floats we set the pots close to the Cornet Bay launch and using binoculars we tried to keep track of them. Even so we did see a boat pull one of the pots but decided not to hop in the boat and motor out to confront them. No point in turning a family day at the beach into an incident. In the end we got our crab and had a long overdue family day at the beach.

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