This year we decided to make an attempt at learning how to shrimp. The spot prawn season is a small window in most areas of the Puget Sound which makes the investment in gear questionable when my schedule is likely not going to line up with the open window to shrimp. The Seattle area is open for 2 days a year, and the majority of the marine areas in Washington are only open for 4 days a year. Which concentrates the madness to the well known areas with the highest probability of catching shrimp. I.e. Hood Canal, the Shrimp District, and Everett. The hazards in these locations are low, minimal current, minimal tidal effects (other than making launching a P.I.T.A with the crowds). The San Juans are a little more of the wild west when it comes to fishing from what I’ve gathered. The currents are strong, The crossings are long, the possible hazard of being stranded by bad weather in a small open boat is high. Probability of pots getting sucked under, drifted off to sea, or lost are real.
I did some research, and figured we’d try the Orval’s buoy puller on a loaded shrimp pot. We did a combat launch at Washington Park, which required dragging my trailer sideways, and implementing some old 4 wheeling techniques to squeeze the dually into the only possible spot. No one can park with a trailer at Washington Park it seems…. We cruised across the Rosario Straights with favorable conditions knowing that a small craft advisory was looming for the afternoon.
We cruised through Thatcher and Pole Passes to the southern ledges of Jones Island. We found a nice flat spot on a plateau in 130ft of water in the Spring Passage area, rigged a pot to test the puller, and tossed the 30lb weighted pot over the side. After rigging up the buoy puller, we initially failed at bringing the pot up on a single shot or any semblance of a reasonable time frame. The recommended drift bag attached to the buoy entangled the pot line. A few mods later, and some readjustments to the chain, drift bag line, and puller we finally got the line not to entangle on the puller. But it was still a P.I.T.A. whether it was because of our little boat, the slight current, or the weight of the pot in the current… It took several runs to get it pulled up or literally drag it behind us enough to submerge the A2 buoy under water to create enough drag to get it up… After a few near prop entanglements in moving current, we decided this would work in an emergency if a pot puller failed, but it was not going to be fun to try on every pot.
Luckily Team Pink showed up in Raz ma taz to get a good laugh at the show. We headed off to the tip of Spieden Island to drop pots in 300′ of water. As we pulled into the first drop zone, we tried not to make a big mess with baiting the pots, and at that point we realized we didn’t pack a few essentials, hand towels, dedicated trash bag, exam gloves, or a tarp to keep the baiting mess contained since we don’t have a self bailing boat and we don’t want that mess under the boat’s floor!
As we went to drop pots, I switched over to the dual screen mode on the Helix 7 with 2/3rds being the down imager, and 1/3rd being the Navionics detailed Sonar Map. The screen said zero feet of depth and was giving a crazy reading on the screen, while the map was saying 300+ feet of depth… A little bit of cursing and confusion I looked back at the stern and the transducer was hanging over the tube of the boat. The conclusion is one of the times we nearly ran the pot puller line into the prop the line ripped the mount off. I hodge podge rigged it back into the mount with only one of two mounting ears and with a shaky image we blindly dropped pots at depth.
We worked our way around with the map, and we blindly dropped another pot in the general vicinity of Razmataz’s other pot. As we looked back at our first pot, the secondary LD2 buoy was vertical. Which meant the primary buoys went under, and the pot was adrift. The one thing I learned on this day is why the secondary LD2 buoy is 6′ to 10′ from the primary shrimping buoys. The primary buoys being smaller will give minimal pull on the pot, while the big buoy will only come into play if the primary buoys get sucked under and will go vertical signaling the pots are adrift. We went to attempt to pull the pot by hand and you could literally feel the current and the pot bouncing, avoiding a shit show in the current with the buoy puller we tried to hail Raz ma taz, but the party was full blaring and they were busy fishing. Knowing that the pot was not going to go under, we shot over and asked for an assist.
Raz ma taz came to the rescue with their pot puller and rescued our pot that had drifted off the ledge into the abyss. They reset it for us and started checking their pots. Eventually we tied off alongside Raz ma taz and they drug our 15′ catamaran dingy around while we hung out and graciously borrowed their puller. We were only marginally successful, but luckily out in the wild west of MA-7West shrimping is generally open all summer vs 4 days in the Hood.
A lot was learned by trial and fire, testing whit’s, and forcing us to find ways to adapt to issues, and a lot will be applied for the next trip! Currently working on a davit puller design to tie into the floor bracing. There’s a list of gear we can cut from the boat, another list to add. After using B’s puller and hearing the crew complain we’ll cut the length of the primary buoy leader to next to the primary buoys so that it’s easier to load onto the puller. The attachment style will be left the same so that it’s easy to move buoys between pots, add a section of line for deeper soaks, or swap to shorter line in coon-stripe shrimping season in the summer.
Lessons learned:
- Bring a tarp to do the baiting on in a boat without a self draining floor. No one wants that smell in the bilge!
- Bring paper towels
- Bring exam gloves for baiting if you don’t have a sink.
- Bring my fishing waiters or pvc bibs and crap shoes, not good gear.
- Custom build a pot puller davit mount, cause hand pulling sucks, and the buoy works so so in an emergency….
- Modify the buoy rigging by shortening the primary buoy line.
- Bring the Katch Cooler II that I have for ling cod spearfishing, and not a real cooler for our shrimp catch. We would have saved a ton of space, and we already had the 28 qt cooler in the tower in a drop bag for our food and beverages. This will also allow us 1 or 2 more pots if we really got into shrimping and wanted to sacrifice the floor space.
- Rig the LD2 buoys to the tower while underway to save space with our limited floor space.
- Might try the blended and pre freeze bait method on the next trip as well, since we saved our second blender from the goodwill for that purpose.
Adventures Through The Looking Glass 
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