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CaTcHiNg
DuNgIeS
By DAVID CAMPICHE
FOR COAST WEEKEND
A crab is an ornery crustacean. The
four legs on its posterior love to dart and
poke and scamper sideways, creating dis-
traction away from the job of the claws or
pinchers. The two front legs, complete with
finger-tearing claws, seem to have a war-
rior’s disdain (or attraction) for human
flesh, particularly the metacarpals. The
crab — 60-pounds of crushing and tearing
force is equally painful from either sex —
seem intent on grabbing and squeezing. Or
mangling.
Bug-Eyed Boys
This is a story about catching the nasty
varmints. Let it be known: that same tena-
cious creature is delicious to eat, indeed,
one of the best proteins one can spoon into
the mouth of a hungry human being. But
any resident of Pacific or Clatsop county
needn’t be lectured on the sublime qualities
of that white fleshy meat. It is eaten with
relish.
The Port of Ilwaco rested quietly, except
for the ripple crisscrossing the brown dish-
water tide. We loaded 10 heavy pots on
board of the good motorboat, Trident, the
proud possession of George and Rachael
Gana. Florescent-colored buoys came
along for the ride. They would decorate the
gray ebbing water of the Columbia River
like Christmas lights brightening up a
quicksilver, rainy December.
We had bait: razor clams and fish heads.
We had packed a lunch, most of which we
wouldn’t eat, due mostly to rough water.
Rachael steered the good boat out of the
harbor. She is competent and steady. She is
kindly. Let it be said, this was sportfishing,
Chapter 1 of our story. Someone dear to me
is a commercial crab fisherman. Below is
his story. We’ll call it Chapter 2.
Often professional crabber’s stories are
war stories: standing at the block (winch)
on an angry sea, combers climbing 10
to 15-feet high, sometimes (god forbid)
Photos by David Campiche
LEFT: The Trident prepares to launch. MIDDLE: Dungeness crabs are the goal. RIGHT: Phil Allen prepares to drop a crab pot.
higher yet. The sea rolling. Roiling. Legs
wanting to buckle, 48 hours after opening
day when professionals crab-fish, no-mat-
ter what. Bulky rain gear weighs them
down. Saltwater finds its way inside. It’s
cold all the time. Sharp wind rifles out of
the southwest. The skipper draws the boat
beside one of a couple hundred buoys, each
attached to a 90-pound crab pot by a long
blue-green line, more weight if stuffed with
writhing Dungies. A deckhand corrals them
one at a time and watches carefully as the
block drags the pot out of the ocean and
above the deck. The fisherman grabs the
pot, swings it over the deck, unlocks the
bale, and unceremoniously drops the crab
into the saltwater hold. Before the next
retrieve, a minute blows by. Another pot
is yanked aboard the vessel. The crabs are
dumped, and then they scamper about in
the saltwater trough, unaware of their fate.
The bait is reloaded. The minutes play out
like the surge of the white-hatted combers.
That route continues, day and night, the
sodium lights illuminating the night deck,
this ocean reality, until the hold is crammed
full of squirming Dungies, or exhaustion
finally overcomes profit, and the boats slug
their way across the Columbia River Bar to
Astoria, Warrenton, Ilwaco or Chinook.
Hard Day for Crabbing
Aboard the Trident, we drop our 10
pots, each one is untangled from a mid-
den of steel and net and rope. Each is
baited; each dropped as the small boat cuts
through surging currents. Rachael is fight-
ing a strong and bitterly cold southeast
wind. The river is running high and fast,
the waves breaking in 4-foot swells, noth-
ing to a commercial crabber, but plenty
enough here.
If it seems a harsh day for crabbing the
river, imagine how the ocean is performing.
Here, battle leads to battle, leads to battle.
The swells on such a day can easily exceed
20 feet. The wind is intense and cold. That
east wind throws spume back over your
head, or splashes into your face. Fingers
are numb. Visibility is poor. Every deck-
hand knows, there is no sleep. Sometimes
you pull a catnap on your feet. The game
must play on — the first few days of crab
fishing generally produce the bulk of profit
for the entire season. “Get ’em now. Get
’em quick.” Hard work and endurance are
simply parts of the game plan. Truck pay-
ments wait at home. The mortgage. Insur-
ance and taxes. Fishermen know the score.
Homeward Bound
Back on the Trident the crabbing is poor.
When the river whips up, the crab hun-
ker down, bury their red-lacquered bod-
ies beneath the sand and wait out the storm.
Our first pot generates two keepers. The
crab must be male. Must measure 5 3/4
inches (commercial: 6 1/4). Today, most of
them don’t. The second pot holds just one
of the pinchy, bug-eyed boys. The next four
pots are empty, and spirits are tumbling
the same direction. I feel the blight of sea-
sickness, fight it back. It always arrives for
me like a ne’er-do-well relative who enters
unannounced on Thanksgiving Day.
Pot number seven produces a few more
crab. Eight has one and nine the same. We
retrieve the 10th empty and think about a
hot-buttered rum and a fire blazing on the
hearth.
The boat rocks and rolls and George
thinks, we should play out a raincheck. We
begin to load the pots back onto the deck.
The gulls rally behind the stern begging
for leftover bait. Across the river along the
South Jetty, sea drift is being thrown 20
and 30 feet into the cold air. Far west of us,
the commercial boats are just starting to
get busy. Forget the storm. Forget an ach-
ing back and frozen hands. Few if any, will
turn back.
On the ocean, combers build as the wind
whips into a cacophony of sea sounds.
Mostly the wind whistles out a sea ditty.
Seabirds duck their small heads under their
wings and ride out the storm. They whistle
and squeak and cluck. The sea is gray. The
vista is a mixture of dirty brown and pew-
ter. Hard to focus on either when the rain
turns visibility into a sheet of translucent
water. No matter. No matter.
The next buoy appears like a plot in a
mystery novel, and the deckhand hooks
onto the line, feeds it through the block
and drags another pot aboard, always cau-
tious to protect his hands from the grinding
winch. Always cautious on a sea that can
quickly take his life.
This is the hard and dirty of crab fishing
on nasty water on a nasty day. Welcome
aboard! CW