Darrell Ticehurst/Fisheries Issues
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Shrimp off San Francisco
Jan. 28 2010, 11:39 PM
Jan. 28 2010, 11:39 PM
Shrimp off San Francisco
Started hearing isolated stories about shrimp off the Central Coast, mostly about the coon striped shrimp (smaller shrimp as contrasted with the larger spot prawns which can be found in deeper water). So I invested in two shrimp pots from Willapa Bay and gave it a try. I run a few crab pots so I just zip tied the two pots to two separate crab pots and put them back down, fishing right where the Dungeness crabs are caught, not expecting much. Imagine my surprise the next day when the first pot I pulled had more than 200 shrimp! And the fact that the shrimp pot was full seemed to pull more crabs into my crab pot as well, so a double win. Anyway the second pot had only about 20, but I was enthused that there might be something to trying this.
Started hearing isolated stories about shrimp off the Central Coast, mostly about the coon striped shrimp (smaller shrimp as contrasted with the larger spot prawns which can be found in deeper water). So I invested in two shrimp pots from Willapa Bay and gave it a try. I run a few crab pots so I just zip tied the two pots to two separate crab pots and put them back down, fishing right where the Dungeness crabs are caught, not expecting much. Imagine my surprise the next day when the first pot I pulled had more than 200 shrimp! And the fact that the shrimp pot was full seemed to pull more crabs into my crab pot as well, so a double win. Anyway the second pot had only about 20, but I was enthused that there might be something to trying this.
Well what with being out of town and the storms I didn’t get back to those pots for two weeks. I had heard that the shrimp pots will leak pretty badly, so I expected to find them empty on this second pull, but no, both pots came up with about 75 shrimp each! After cleaning I had 1.5 lbs of shrimp. Interestingly, the shrimp pots also came up with a few 6” to 12” ling cod. I don’t know if they were eating many, but they could have reduced my count even more.
These Willapa Bay pots are the smaller mesh pots, half inch size, as compared to the more common 7/8 inch mesh pots. The shrimp ran small, about 3” to 4” in length when whole, but there were enough to get us interested, and really tasty. I had the pots in 190’ of water on sand, using Friskies cat food for bait. I’m just an amateur at these shrimp, learning as I go, but the results so far have got me going.
I’ll be doing some experimenting along the way, and I’ve already got two more pots that I’ll get out soon. Hope this keeps up, it is nice to have something to do on the water when everything else is closed.
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