One of the perils of recreational crabbing here in the Puget Sound WA is exposing yourself and your crabbing gear to potential thievery.
Okay, so maybe it’s not quite as perilous as the Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch,” but it certainly is extremely annoying and frustrating!
We went out onto Hood Canal last Saturday afternoon to retrieve our crab pots, only to find 3 out of the 4 missing. The remaining pot had been picked clean.
There are instances (usually during the weekdays) when we don’t have a lot of time, and simply drop off our crab pots, leaving them out overnight. On the weekends, when we’re not in as much of a hurry, we’ll catch some rays, or tool over to Pleasant Harbor, while we wait for our pots to fill up.
Occasionally, it is entirely possible to set your pots too close to a steep underwater shelf, and have the current drag them into deeper water. But we dropped ours out at the peak of high tide, and left more than enough excess rope to compensate for any variables. It’s also highly unlikely that 3 pots, set at varying depths, would all strangely disappear, or that the 4th pot would be empty.
So, to you low-life crab pot crooks, I offer the following message:
Each of my crab pot buoys are marked with my name and phone number - Rich Jacobson (360) 440-4758. If you feel it necessary to pull up our pots and pilfer our crab, then at least leave the crab pots intact where you find them. We’ve always been very generous with the bounty of our catch and we don’t mind sharing some with you. But having to replace our gear is a huge pain and gets rather costly.
May the Creator of Crabbing Karma repay you for your dastardly deeds of Dungeness deprivation.
~ o ~ o ~ o ~ o ~ o ~
Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing knowledgeable empowerment and relentless representation for his clients of residential properties and vacant land throughout all of Kitsap County WA and portions of Pierce, Mason, and Jefferson Counties. You can also find him at KitsapLife.com and SOUNDBITEBLOG, CrabbingInTheHood, or e-mail: kitsapagent@gmail.com
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