How To Crab Fish - Nomad Unlimited

What You Will Need When Learning How to Crab Fish

First, there are essentially six things that you need to in order to learn how to crab fish.

Pole

The pole I recommend should be at least ten feet. One option that a lot of people get and is a good crabbing pole is a BERRYPRO 10′ surf rod.

Reel

You’re going to want, in my opinion, a size 6,000 reel, though I recommend a size 8,000 reel. When you have your crab snare full of bait, that’s going to weigh at least 5 or 6 ounces. Plus you’ll have another 5 ounce weight, sometimes 8 ounce weight. Therefore, you could potentially have a pound of weight that you’re throwing out on your pole. If you have a 6 foot pole and a 4,000 reel, thing is not going to do anything. It’s going to break before you get your line out. I have a Penn Battle II 8000 and it feels like butter when reeling in crabs, even if you get a double hookup keeper!

Line

When it comes to line, my recommendation is to get at least 30lb braid. Like I said, when you’re casting a pound of weight, you’re putting a lot of pressure on your pole. Maybe even more when you’re first learning how to crab fish, but 30lb minimum would be my recommendation.

Weight

Depending on where you are, you should use a 3oz triangle weight if your weight is on the outside of the snare. I’d also recommend all the way up to 8oz though if your reel can handle that amount of lead. The amount of weight you should use though will also depend on the current. If there’s a strong current, of course you’ll want more weight. Essentially you want the crab snare to fall out, fall into the bottom of the ocean, and sit there so that the baits can just grow. That’s what’s going to attract the fish. You don’t want to have your snare out in the water and the current moving all over the place. That’s a good way to not get a crab – you’re just not going to attract them.

Snare

The snare you should use should be at least a ½” x ½”, 16 gauge, hardware cloth snare. This way, the holes are small enough where the bait won’t come out. If you have a bunch of little tiny crabs though, those guys will be able pick away at it and they’ll get your bait. For the most part though, the big crabs won’t be able to get in and pick off your bait. ½” x ½” is the ideal size.

Bait

You’re going to need bait. Squid and mackerel, in that order are in my opinion the best bait. Then, depending on the day I’d go with either chicken, smelt, or old fish carcasses.

How to Cast

There’s two ways to cast. You can cast overhand, straight over your shoulder, and straight out. In my opinion, I don’t think you get as much distance with this method.
The way I prefer, which is probably best when learning how to crab fish, is casting from your side. I’ve been doing it this way for my whole life. One thing about casting a heavy weight though, is that when you cast you want your pole to kind of be like a spring. Therefore, before you cast it out, let your weight bounce one time, and that will enable you to really get a great distance on it.

One thing I’ve seen when people try to cast side-arm though is that they let go way too early. Their snare will just go flying down parallel to the water, flying down people’s faces. So you don’t want to do that either. In order to get some good practice, you should go somewhere where there’s no one around. Otherwise you might embarrass yourself, or even worse you might hurt someone!

Weather & Water Conditions

As far as these conditions go, the very first thing you should check is the wind. If it’s over 15mph, it’s not even worth it to go. Your line will be bowing, it’s going to cause waves, wind swells, etc.

Next, check out the current and the swell. To check this out, you look at low tide and you compare it to the high tide. If there’s not much of a change between it, you know the current will be less because not as much water is moving from low tide to high tide. As an example, if low tide is a 2, and high tide is a 5, then it’s going to move 3′ within 6 1/2 hours. So that’s a pretty good current for you, pretty low. Conversely, let’s say low tide is a -1 and it’s going to move up to a 6. That means it’s going to move 7′ in 6 hours, so you’ll want to avoid those days.

There are some spots though where the current isn’t as strong. If you’ve got a spot, you might want to keep it a secret and go there on those days!

Swelling

Now of course, the swell is another major factor when learning how to crab fish. If it’s a big swell, the waves are going to be crashing out far, and the crows probably aren’t going to be near shore. Another important thing about the swell is if the waves come into shore, you want them to be as low as possible. Because when you’re reeling in the crab snare, and your crab is coming in, your crab might be near the top of the water column and it might start surfing that wave. If it starts surfing that wave and it comes in faster than you can reel in, you’ll put slack in your line and loosen the crab snare, and the crab will just fall right off. So pick a day when the swell is low, that’s a good way to minimize the height of the waves. Another way is to go at low tide. Usually what I do is, I go two hours before low tide and two hours after low tide. This way the swell and the waves minimize in height near shore. By the way, the swell you want to look for I would say is 5′ or less.

Conditions for Dungeness Crab Fishing

You’ll want a sandy bottom floor, and maybe some seagrass is ok. You don’t want a lot of kelp though, and you don’t want a lot of rocks. There’s no dungeness crabs near rocks, that’s where the rock crabs hang out!

Setting Your Snare

Ok! So you’ve cast it out already and you’re ready to set the hook and bring it in. I see a lot of people that will jerk it one time, then they’ll start reeling, jerk it again, reel again, etc. However, what you do when you jerk it back like that and then bring it forward is put slack in the line which is going to open the snares. So not do that! You’ll look like a newb!

The proper way is to point the tip of your pole to the horizon and set the hook back. Then, when you can’t pull back anymore you start reeling and keep constant tension on the line. Your pole should be constantly bent and not going back and forth, just constantly pulling.

Now if you’ve got a real big one on there, you’ll pull and the pole will be bent, you’ll pull back because you can’t reel since it’s so heavy, and then just reel forward and move forward while keeping the pole bent. When you reel forward and can’t do it anymore, pull back again and repeat, just like you’re pulling in a big fish. It’s the same concept, you just want to make sure you have tension on the line consistently.

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