One of the best things I enjoy about living out on the beautiful Kitsap Peninsula here in scenic Washington State, is taking my 16 ft. C-Dory out on the Hood Canal, part of the extensive inland waterways of Puget Sound. The Hood Canal is a long, deep, narrow strip of water wedged in between the Kitsap Peninsula and the picturesque Olympic Peninsula. The Olympic Mountain Range rises up rather dramatically from the edge of the water. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking.!
One of the many benefits of boating on the Hood Canal is recreational crabbing. The Dungeness Crab is the prized catch in these waters. The season typically opens the first week of July and runs through Labor Day weekend. The Washington Department of Fish & Game is extremely active in monitoring sports fishing in our state, so you better be in compliance with all current rules and regulations! (WA Dept. of Fish & Wildlife)
We launch our boat out at Miami Beach in Seabeck WA. We learned through experience to be mindful of the tide schedule. If you go out too close to low tide, you will have a rough time getting your boat down the ramp. So we usually launch an hour or two before the peak of high tide. (WA Tide Schedules)
Once on the water, we head over towards Dabob Bay, just around the Toandoes Peninsula, and prepare to lower our crab pots. You can purchase crabbing gear from the Sportsman Warehouse in Silverdale. You can figure on spending a minimum of $80 per rig, including the crap pot (cage), buoy & flag, 100′ of weighted line, bait box, and weights. Being bottom-dwellers, crabs will eat just about anything, but they seem to be partial to salmon guts. Several of our area supermarkets (Silverdale Red Apple Market and Central Market in Poulsbo WA) save the guts when they clean the fish, and sell them for crab bait.
We lower the crab pots (usually in about 60 to 100 feet of water) and then head over to Pleasant Harbor, a quaint little port nestled on the Olympic side. They have a convenience store, pizza parlor, and deck overlooking the harbor. We’ll grab some cold drinks, pork-out on pizza, and catch some rays as we wait a couple hours in hopeful expectation that our pots will fill up.
We head back and pull up our crab pots, carefully extracting the prized booty. We prefer to clean the crabs while we’re out on the water. It makes for less clean-up later and allows you to put more edible crab into the pot when cooking. We also bring salt water back with us, to use for boiling the crab in. Some people prefer to use fresh water and add a crab boil spice pouch. I have found that boiling the crab in saltwater gives it a really great natural flavor. There is a difference of opinion on how long to boil the crab. I have found that 12 to 15 minutes after reaching boiling point is more than enough time. I’ll drain the water, and put the crab into a big stainless bowl, covering it with ice to cool it quickly. Some people like to dip their crab in melted butter, but I prefer to eat it right out of the shell.
There are few things better in life than spending a few relaxing hours out on the Hood Canal, bringing home some fresh crab, and porking out!
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Rich Jacobson is a licensed real estate professional providing 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.
I too love to crab in Hood Canal. My wife’s parents had a cabin at Hood Point (now sold – sad story). We used to crab every weekend we could and I love the taste of fresh crab right out of the pot. My wife’s ashes are just off Hood Point – so fitting as she loved Hood Canal and crabbing more than any th hing else. I live in Tucson now but my boys and I come up every year (coming this week!).
Keith: Have a great time when you’re up with the boys!
Hi! Just wondering if there are piers to crab off of in hood canal, my family will be staying near Quilcene. Thanks!
Tina: There is a public boat launch and small harbor just to the south side of Dabob Bay that has some dock areas. You can contact Kayak Brinnon and rent some kayaks equipped with crab pots as well:
http://www.hoodcanalkayak.com/
Hope that helps you! Have a wonderful time!
Rich Jacobson
Rich,
It’s been almost a year since the last post. My family and I were wanting to take a day trip to do some crabbing over in that area. I can’t find the harbor you had listed on ” google “. All that I’ve found indicated that the only access is via boat launches on the North end. Do you know what the name of the boat launch is? Maybe I / we would have better luck finding it on Google if I had the name of the launch site? Thanks ; respectfully. Jeremy
Jeremy: There’s several boat launches that I use, mostly it’s the public launch over on Misery Point, near Miami Beach in Seabeck. The other one is Salisbury Point just north of the Hood Canal Bridge. Just depends on where you want to go crabbing….