FISHING
Laundry Hamper Crabbin’ Catching Dungies and red rocks off the beach isn’t as productive as from a boat or pier, but it’s not impossible either.
By Andy Walgamott
A
funny thing happened last summer as I attempted to catch crabs with what I was billing to others as the “least effective way possible.” It worked. There I was in my waders, pulling our laundry hamper behind me as I essentially trolled the eel grass, seaweed patches, cobble fields and sand flats for Dungeness and red rocks on a Central Sound beach during a -2.5-foot late morning low tide last July. When I found a crab, I jousted it with one of my sons’ plastic telescopic pincer toys to try and get a hold and lift it into the basket for further inspection. The device didn’t work that great for grabbing the crabs, as their claws could still slip through the gap behind the pincers, but it had me officially retiring the chicken wire/ broomstick getup I had used during the previous day’s minus tide.
THE PREVIOUS DAY was when I had decided that wading for crabs was the least effective method ever. After a milelong wade-athon down the beach and then back up it, all I had to show for it was 1) a pair of female Dungies – one of which was in softshell form and both were released, of course – 2) another that disappeared into thick eelgrass before I could check its privates, and 3) the dawning realization that my waders were no longer waterproof in the area of my own privates.
A red rock crab pinches the pincer that editor Andy Walgamott used to prod it out of the nearshore shallows of a Puget Sound beach last summer. (ANDY WALGAMOTT)
nwsportsmanmag.com | JULY 2021
Northwest Sportsman 147
