This long weekend has been a perfect weekend to break out the crabbing gear and hit the docks.   It’s Friday night, a 3 day holiday weekend and we have company ready to try their hand at crabbing.

At about 7pm on Friday we hit the docks.  We had 5 crab rings and a crab pot and a load of turkey drumsticks.

When we got to Webers pier in Bandon there were quite a few people but we managed to squeeze in about half way down and set up shop.   As usual on the way we asked how people were doing.   Most had 1 or 2 crabs and said it wasn’t doing very good but we were steadfast in our course to catch that elusive delicacy known as the Dungeness Crab.

After about 20 minutes we had all of the crab rings unwould, turkey legs in place, rings tied off and we were ready to go.  We just needed one more thing a quick shot of something I was hoping would set our crab rings up as the premier dining destination.   Out of our bait bucket came the secret weapon, 1 spray bottle of Gulp Alive Spray (herring flavor).

I hadn’t used this before for crabbing but I am a big fan of Gulp baits for saltwater.   I was at Tony’s Crab Shack when I saw this and a thought came to mind, if it works for fish, maybe it’ll work for crabs.  Everyone knows you pretty much can’t use good fish as the seals tend to take it, so you use turkey or chicken, but with just a little spritz of Gulp, maybe it’ll smell of herring.

So with a spray or two on each the crab rings and one crab pot they hit the waters.   For the next 15 minutes we spent swapping fishing stories like a bunch of seasoned deck hands.  With each telling the stories only got bigger and bigger of course.  (Don’t let that fool you, this story is the truth)

When it was time to pull pots I started with the first one, it was about 7:15 pm and as soon as I pulled on the rope I knew things were looking up or we were going to have mounds of kelp.

With some steading pulling up came ring number one.   I could see as soon as it got close there were a couple of big dungeness and from the looks of them, they were male to boot.  No need for the crab measurer.  

When it hit the dock there were 2 really nice males and in one pull we’d managed to do what most people on the docks had spent hours on.   So we continued down the line.

On that first pull of 5 rings we got 3 beautiful dark purple dungeness crab.  Not bad for 15 minutes soak, a couple of turkey legs and a shot of Gulp spray.

To make a long story short we crabbed from 7pm til about 9:30 or so and caught 14 keepers.  In talking to people on either side we knew we were killing them.  We had more than everyone on the docks combined.  We didn’t say a word about the spray.

We went up cleaned them, took them home and dumped them in the turkey cooker.   What a great night of crabbing.

On Sunday we decided we’d hit the docks again only we started at 5pm.   Using the same setup and our secret ingredient we crabbed for about 4 hours with rain on and off and landed 22 more crab.

This was the best crabbing I had seen in ages and I have to say I lay all the blame for the hard work on Gulp Alive Herring flavored spray.  Nobody was catching like we were even the people who left before we got their spot. 

As people wandered by and looked at our two full buckets of crabs they all asked what we were fishing with, to which I said, just Turkey legs.   Though for a couple of people we had seen the previous friday and a family next to us we let out our little secret.

The family next to us had 3 rings, one with pork pieces, one with liver and one with hotdogs.  They weren’t doing very good so when the liver filled ring came up I asked if they wanted a shot of the Gulp spray.  They said sure and I gave it two sprays.  About 10 minutes later he pulled that in and it had a keeper and about 20 smaller crab.  It was the most they’d brung up the whole night and all in one ring.  When they brought up their other 2 I sprayed them too which seemed to have the desired affect of finding more dungeness crab.

I cannot tell you 100% that it was just the herring spray but we had people on either side of us using basically the same crabbing gear and bait and we were out catching them about 10 to 1.  It could have been a lucky spot, a magic genie in a bottle, or hitting the crab lottery, but I am more inclined to think it was the Gulp Spray.

I will give it a few more tries before the end of the summer and see how it goes.