Saturday February 3, 2018 Bandon Oregon
A short drive north to Bandon
We left about 9:30 today to go crabbing. We drove up 101 north to Ron’s place just below Bandon. He has a boat and most of the crab traps.
We all headed on up to Bandon and put in down near the river’s mouth here. That’s the boat on the left which Steve and Ron will use and John and I are in the kayaks with John standing there.
We left the ramp and crossed over the river to the rocky jetty area about a half mile. I followed.
Putting out the traps
They put out five crab traps. We immediately lost site of one of the traps and couldn’t fine the buoy, but figured the fast incoming high tide was strong enough to submerge the buoy it was out of site. We figured it would show up when the tide went slack and it did.
These people rode their horses by us and returned later.
The boat is just finishing putting out all the traps and up ahead is some kind of light house.
Here’s the lighthouse on the north jetty.
Killed some time
We hung around out there shooting the bull for a half hour or so then they pulled up a trap or two.
Time to pull up some traps
Here they are hooking the buoy to pull up the crab trap.
We caught some crab, but most of them were females or too small so we had to throw most of them back.
Here Steve is throwing a small one back.
Here’s he’s pulled another pot up and we had a couple keepers.
We were catching lots of crab but most of them were non keepers.
Not as good as bragged about
Well we didn’t do quite as well as the guys n the boat bragged about, but we got enough for us and some friends to have a nice crab dinner.
We are back at the boat ramp loading the boat back on the trailer.
Installed some spark plugs on the big motor
From there we drove on over to the Napa parts store to get new spark plugs for the larger motor as it wouldn’t run properly.
Steve installed the new plugs at the Napa Store and we stopped at a small lake to test the engine out.
Test fails, no start
We put the boat in the water, but couldn’t get the engine started so had no choice but to put the boat back on the trailer and head on home.
Ron hits pot holes and messes up the boat
Driving out the dirt road to the main road Ron hit a pot hole that tilted his boat on the trailer badly so we stopped at Ron’s house to help him get the boat back on the trailer properly. Luckily he has a Bobcat machine which we used to get the boat back right on the trailer. Steve then tried to get the motor to go again with no luck. They need some new cables to make it all work right.
I’ll stick with my kayak as there are no motors to deal with.
Once home Steve set up water for boiling and he boiled up the crab.
Our share
Here’s our share of the crab all cooked up and ready to consume. Ron was nice enough to donate his share of the crab to us so we had plenty for friends too.
Just the way crab should be
Steve and I devour the crab we had. Nice and fresh and firm and sweet. Yummmmmm.
All the paddling I did today chasing the motor boat around really wore me out so I am beat.
Nice day.