Let me ask you a question. Do you like to eat dungies but don't have a boat or pots to go catch them? If you answered yes to that, then this is the blog post for you. I have talked about the challenges of crabbing the traditional way in my Free Diving For Dungeness Crab post. Freediving takes care of the boat and gear problem. However, not everyone is going to want to get in the water and dive for crab. So, I started thinking about what other options are out there and came up with a couple of things to try.
For these options, a pair of waders or hip boots will be either required or very useful. If this is the only thing you use them for, a cheap pair will do just fine. I would recommend these waders or these hip boots. As always, you will need a measuring device like this one.
The first method is simply setting a pot from the beach. Maybe you have a pot laying around or scavenged one from the dump, but you don't have a boat to go set it with. You can roll a pot down the beach and set it from the tideline and have decent success. One beach around here gets a small accumulation of pots at the low tideline in the spring. If you want your pot to stay fishing even at low tide, that is where the waders or hip boots come into play. They allow you to get out further in the water and set the pot deeper. You still need to mark it with a buoy, but the setup becomes a little different. After you set the pot, run the buoy line up the beach to get it above the tideline for the next time you will be there to check (see illustration). You can check it the next day, or you can soak it for a week if you like, but on the next low tide, you can get there; go down and pull the pot in.
The other method is to dipnet crab at low tide. This is where waders become necessary rather than just helpful. Simply put on your waders, grab your dipnet, find a mudflat, and slowly walk along in the water. This one is an excellent choice for a net. Once you find a crab, scoop it up with the dipnet before it runs away. Make sure you have your measurer and something to put any legal crab in like this one. Dipnetting can be done during the day or at night, whenever there is a big low tide. At night you will need a headlamp like this one. Crab are typically more active at night, so that could be the better time to go. While you are walking along, make sure you aren't only looking for crab that are up and walking around. Keep a keen eye out for any dimple in the mud that might be a crab that has buried itself.
You can do both of these methods year-round, but you will have your best luck in spring and summer. If you wait until summer, though, try and get out there before commercial crab opens. After that, you will be getting lots of smalls and softies. There's nothing wrong with eating soft crab, I think they have a better flavor anyways, but you will get quite a bit more meat out of nice hard crab. The where is pretty simple; crabs live on muddy bottoms, so go find a muddy bottom. Some mudflats will hold more crab than others, but just about every mudflat will have some. It is a simple process of elimination to find the better spots.
Thank you for reading, and good luck out there! Don't forget to check out our other posts for more great content and subscribe to get email notifications of new posts. We also have a photography store where you can purchase prints, mugs, tote bags, and more! Find it here.