a solution to crab trap theft?

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kayakwriter

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Hi all,

Been lurking for a bit. I fish and crab out of my kayak, so most of my techniques don’t apply to the bigger boats most of you seem to use. But I thought I might be able to offer a (borrowed) solution to crab trap poaching.

In his book on catching crabs, Charlie White offers this idea. In the book, it’s demo’d with an educational and amusing cartoon. Here’s my thousand words to compensate for that one missing picture:

Use a floating line instead of a sinking line for the trap. Slip a few of those slide-on white foam floats onto the line. Slide them to the middle of the line, and secure them there with stopper knots at either end. Tie one end of the line to the trap. Weight the other end with a small anchor, a mesh bag of rocks, or whatever.

Drop the trap into place. Back off in your boat to stretch the line out a bit, then drop the weighted end. The buoyant line and floats will make the line form a submarine arch. You want to guesstimate the distance between trap and line end so that the apex of this arch is far enough beneath the water to be out of reach of props and prying eyes, even at low tide.

To retrieve your trap, troll at right angles to the line with a grapple (or the right sort of anchor) ‘til you hook it. In my older edition of Charlie’s book, he suggests noting a couple of “gunsight” references on shore (two objects lined up) when you set the trap that will guide you to do this when you return. I’m guessing in the age of super-accurate, WAAS-enabled GPS with real-time mapping, you could probably mark the locations where you dropped the trap and the line end, and get your right-angle run close enough on your return.

I haven’t tried this yet – I mostly fish for crabs on really remote trips – but I’m off to Port Hardy next week. Reading the other threads about the thieving has made me determined to try it if I’m going to be out of sight of my trap.

Cheers and happy, theft-free crabbing,

Philip


"Sail if you can - paddle if you must."
 
Good luck with all of that. Sounds like a lot of trouble to go through to go crabbing and an easy way to lose a trap. It's really too bad that it's come to even having to consider doing something like this. It's a sign of the times that some people will steal crab or worse yet the traps as well. I've pretty much given up crabbing for just this reason. I used to like to drop the traps on the way out fishing and get some bonus crabs on the trip home. If you do that now you're just lucky to find your traps which have been picked clean.
 
I'm not convinced that Charlie's method will work for you -- maybe in an area without tidal forces but those can be hard to find. Very frequently when I pull my trap up, there is kelp and other gunk on the trap and line. I could see the arched line getting weighed down with weed, twisting around on itself and creating a mess. I'm thinking this is more effort than it's worth and probably has just as high a degree of likelihood of a lost trap as the standard method.

Fishing out in the Oak Bay flats yesterday I landed my first crab trap of the season. It was on the bottom in about 100' of water and had about 30' of line and a float attached to it. The hook from the anchovy teaser caught it and remarkably I was able to reel it up enough that the float popped up to the surface. We were able to boat it. Must have drifted out or got caught on someone's prop -- the line was pretty chewed up. It was one of those cheap square blue ones that you can buy at the Oak Bay Marina or Cdn tire.
 
Not to sure if DFO would approve as they state traps must have a float with fishermans name and telephone number.
 
kayakwriter: don't bother trying this. It's a nice theory but will not work in practice. You will most likely loose your trap that way...
 
Greater chance of having someone drop a trap over yours. Some of Charlie White's ideas make me wonder why he attracted so much attention years ago.
 
Sounds good in theory but real life would be a different story. Just watch them traps and report to cops whoever the hell touches them.
I dropped mine yesterday night to find them today 100ft or so further down the channel. So good luck finding them without seeing that buoy.
Give it a try and let us know if it works :)

cheers



gonefishingsign.gif
 
there are things called zinc strips that you coil your line and put these on it and the salt water eats the zinc away after 12-24-48 hour and your float pops up to the surface
 
The best idea i have read here is the treble hooks embedded in the line. That will get the poachers attention.
 
After losing my second trap this year (trap only, the float, line and line weight were still there), I have decided to place a video camera on the shore. My camera will record for up to 3 hours and it only took 45 minutes for my last trap to go missing. :(
 
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