The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Crab season just closed after being open for two whole months, what used to be open pretty much year round but now has shrunk to 5 days a week for those two measly months. Which, if you’re a pot crabber, means you have to pull your traps Monday night and reset Wednesday morning and start all over. I guess the Fish and Game folks want to give the Dungeness a fighting chance against a weeklong onslaught.

Personally I’m a great believer in equalizing the odds too. So much so, in fact, that I wade into their eelgrass domain barefoot, mano y mano and toe to toe with the crustacean monsters. No sissy traps for me, fancy rigs baited with Trader Joe yuppie blends of smoked salmon and brie, dropped from party boats, passing yachts, high end fishing boats and vacationing sailboats. Factor in the gear, the gas, the bait, the GPS fish finder, license and trailer, those Dungeness run about two bitcoins apiece for these folks.

4th of July I was wading into the Dungeness jungles, unarmed except for my rusty potato rake, a bucket and my wits, okay, not much of a match, bare feet crunching on clam shells and the occasional crab, just me and 18 herding herons for as far as the eye could see, about a 3 mile stretch from Pebble Beach to Mabana. Mt. Rainier was perfectly framed in the straits, the Olympics were jutting up beyond Whidbey Island, the tide flowing out through the eelgrass looked like mermaid hair. Sand dollar colonies had expanded another year and moon snails had showed up too, big goopy bodies in giant shells eating god only knows what. Flounders, sole, rays and passing fish, all of us working the tideflats. With the gulls and the crows and the eagles waiting for scraps.

Oh … and of course, the crabs. Some folks crab for food and some crab to justify the expense of their boats. But me, I’m after the adventure. And even if I come home empty handed without dinner, those couple of hours out in the water, putting toes in another world out by the drop-off, four football fields distant from shore, I think is plenty enough. Course, it’s even better when I bring back a few specimens to study. And hopefully to eat….

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