Spot Shrimp Attack!

Area 10 West One Day Opening Delivers!

Area 10 regulations only allow for a 4 hour window (8am - noon) one day per year. We rarely limit at 80 spot shrimp but this year we did well. We 'soaked' 4 pots around 300 feet between 2.5 and 3.5 hours, only pulling them once. We must have been in the right place as we set our traps all in a line, roughly 50 yards apart. It was blowing 15 knots, switching from ebb to flood, with a max current of 3/4 knots. It was a pleasure to be able to handle the wheel (avoiding the dreaded line in the prop debacle) while the 3 man crew handled lines and traps.

Over the years we've refined our technique to use a block at the end of the boom and rig a preventer to hold the boom 3-4 feet out from the boat. Since we pull these traps by hand, we can use our stonger triceps (vs biceps), and keeps the traps away from the boat and the line away from the propeller.

Bait: This changes every year depending what I can find cheap. You are trying to create a soft mash that sends out a scent stream to attract your quarry. You want it thick, like mashed potatoes. Here's my basic recipe:

• Potatoe flakes (base for mash)
• Minimum two cans 12oz fish (mackeral or salmon)
• Dry cat food (fish flavor, preferally)
• 1-2 cups fish fertilizer (or Shrimp/crab fuel)
• Or just use cat food soaked in vegetable oil (frozen the night before)
• Adding fish heads/guts is always a good idea.

Cleaning your shrimp: Lots of videos out there but this way works best to remove the 'vein'.

• Remove their heads by twisting the tails from their heads
• Peal the shells off leaving the last two segments
• Pinch the tail and pull it upwards
• Slowly remove the tail from the meat
• This captures and removes the digestive track (vein) that runs down the middle of the tail

National Park Pass Access

Getting older can have its perks!

U.S. citizens and permanent residents age 62 or over can purchase a discounted senior National Park Pass. This pass allows access to pass owner and accompanying passengers in a single, private, non-commercial vehicle at Federal operated recreation sites across the country.

San Juan Islands Refuge consists of 83 rocks, reefs, grassy islands, and forested islands scattered throughout the San Juan Islands of northern Puget Sound. These islands, totaling almost 450 acres, were set aside to protect colonies of nesting seabirds, including pigeon guillemots, double-crested cormorants, and pelagic cormorants. They also attract a variety of other wildlife, including bald eagles and harbor seals. In order to help maintain the natural character of these islands, all the refuge islands except Matia and Turn are closed to the public.

The National Park Pass is good at these areas:

• Blind Bay
• Patos Island
• Turn Island
• Matia island
• English Camp Visitor Center - Westcott Bay

The passes are valid at more than 2,000 Federal recreation sites where Entrance or Standard Amenity Fee(s) (Day use fees) are charged by the following agencies:

• Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
• Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation)
• Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)
• USDA Forest Service (USDA FS)
• National Park Service (NPS)
• US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE)l

Separate (and overlapping) from the National Park System is the Washington State Parks system which has the largest state-managed mooring system in the nation, with more than 40 marine parks and more than 8,500 feet of public moorage space. Northern moorage sites in the San Juan Islands and Southern moorage sites in Puget Sound.

Fees are charged year round for mooring at docks, floats, and buoys from 1 p.m. to 8 a.m. An annual pass is also available.

• Mooring bouys are non-reservable and first-come, first-served.
• The daily fee is 70 cents per foot, with a minimum of $15
• Moorage buoys is $15 a night
• Annual moorage permit is $5 per foot, with a minimum of $60

More info:

• List of all federal recreation sites
• Washington State National Parks

Harbor Porpoises

After nearly disappearing from local waters for decades, harbor porpoises are once again a common sight in Puget Sound.

Harbor porpoises have been detected as deep as 770 feet in the waters of the San Juan Islands. But they usually stay near the surface, coming up regularly to breathe. Some say their puffing sounds like a sneeze.

Common in our inland waters through the 1940s and ’50s, harbor porpoises virtually disappeared in Puget Sound south of Admiralty Inlet and Hood Canal by the early 1970s.

Entanglement in gill nets, which drowns the air-breathing mammals, vessel noise, and contamination from industrial pollution are all possible culprits, pushing the animals farther north in their range.

But beginning in about 2007, the sight of the quick slipslide of porpoises through the waters of Puget Sound has become common once again. In calm conditions, the animals can be seen everywhere from the Mukilteo ferry dock, to Burrows Pass near Anacortes, to the waters of West Seattle.

More info:

• Cascadia Research - Puget Sound Dolphins and Porpoises
• NOAA - Dall's Porpoises
• Wikipedia - Dall's Porpoises

Gray Whales in Puget Sound

Spotting whales is one of those things that grounds you in how beautiful life is and gives you a profound sense of gratitude.

Gray whales make one of the longest annual migrations of any mammal, traveling about 10,000 miles round-trip and in some cases upwards of 14,000 miles between Mexico and Alaska. They are listed as endangered in the Pacific Ocean.

Grays can be almost 50 feet long as adults (15 feet at birth) and eat some of the smallest creatures in the sea. They use their baleen to sift massive amounts of shrimp from along the sea floor.

Between March and May we see some of these whales detour into the Stait of Juan de Fuca, into Puget Sound and into Saratoga Passage, off Everett and into Port Susan. This group of about 14 Grays started coming into the Sound around 1991. They are here to feast on the ghost shrimp and fatten up on their way to their prime feeding grounds up north in Alaska.

These Grays are known locally as the Sounders. They are a special group that has somehow discovered a secret stash of tasty treats in the shallow sandy waters around Whidbey Island. While many of their buddies starve to death before making it to Alaska this group found an all-you-can-eat buffet. It's not without some risk. These big guys wait for high tide so they can manuever their massive bodies into the shallows and scoop up hundreds of pounds a day of these treats. When the Sounders show up, they are hungrey and emaciated. Many of them might not have eaten for seven months. Some wanna-be Sounders follow the veteran Sounders but don't have the risk tollerance to muck around in the shallows and risk getting stranded.

More info:

• Cascadia Research Collective
• Gray Whale Identification Guide
• Seattle Times - Gray whales learn daring feeding strategy in Puget Sound: Digging for ghost shrimp at high tide
• NOAA - Gray Whales
• Wikipedia - Gray Whales
• Ghost Shrimp - Washington State Department of Natural Resources Report