Bottoms Up, Astoria
by Tony Vinciguerra
The crab trap baiter was wearing orange suspenders and a hat now made famous by Mario and Luigi in the Super Mario Bros. video games. He even had a bushy mustache like them. It was so bushy that I could see it clearly from my second-floor perch.
My wife Michelle, her step-father Chris, her step-brother Eric and I decided to head down to the boat to start our day. I couldn’t wait to see those tire-shaped crab traps up close.
Hank, the captain of the boat introduced himself and told us that the Super Mario look-alike was George, the mate. George was too busy cutting up frozen herring and adding monofilament snells to hooks to greet us.
As we pushed off, the first order of business was dropping off the crab traps, which must have been about 70 pounds of cast iron. Michelle’s step-dad Chris volunteered to help with this task. The sun was shining bright, and the wind was fairly calm. All in all, it was a nice day to be out on the water, but would we catch any fish?
Capt. Hank informed us that we just missed the coho run. He offered to take us trolling for some salmon, but made no guarantees. He felt a lot more confident about doing some bottom fishing for lingcod and sea bass. Between those two fish and the Dungeness crabs we planned to catch in the traps, we were sure to come home with some meat.
That was the first of many ways that this trip differed from all of my other fishing trips. Most of my fishing trips are catch-and-release outings. Second, I’m usually fishing the surface or near the surface, often with a fly rod. In this scenario, we’d be dropping right down to the bottom.
Although the sun was shining brightly at the marina and in the areas where we dropped the crab traps, the fog ruled the areas we fished. It’s possible that the fog makes for better bottom fishing. We were only fishing about 20 feet down.
Chris and Eric had an easier time with this type of fishing than Michelle and I. While Chris and Eric had their lines hung up at a couple of times, I was constantly breaking my line off.
While the rest of us were breaking our lines, Eric broke the ice by landing the first fish, a cabezon. While I’d seen similar fish on the east coast, I wasn’t quite sure what it was. I asked Hank and George, “Is that a monkfish?” “Um, yeah, sure,” they responded. I was surprised that they didn’t know exactly what this fish was, but they suggested that we keep it. Eric landed another a few minutes later. Chris soon landed one as well. When we got back to shore, we figured out why the captain and the mate were playing dumb. A sign read “No keeping of cabezon caught by boat.” It even had a detailed drawing of the fish.
We moved from spot to spot trying to find some lingcod and sea bass. One thing we couldn’t avoid was seeing sea lions. They popped up everywhere.
Eric seemed to have the right touch as he pulled up a nice lingcod that was just over the 24-inch size limit. He soon landed another that was even bigger. To save George the hassle, he released it himself. It bounced around the bottom of the boat, which tipped in a large swell. The lingcod slid toward the stern and slid right through an overflow door. All of our jaws dropped wide open. Eric began laughing uncontrollably. “You couldn’t have done that again if you tried,” I said.
Despite Eric’s two nice fish, Capt. Hank decided to move us along to another spot. We weren’t alone in our new spot. We came up close to a sea wall, and through the fog we heard the barking of many sea lions. The fog seemed to have caught itself on the sea wall, which was covered with sea lions.
I quickly hooked my first fish of the day, a starfish. To make me feel better, Eric caught a starfish as well, although his was considerably larger. Michelle quickly caught her second anchovy of the day. This new spot wasn’t faring well.
Patience paid off, however. Eventually, I caught my first sea bass. It fought better than I expected. A few “casts” (that is, dropping the line down to the bottom) later, I hooked a nice lingcod, which had all the fighting ability of your average Converse tennis shoe.
Chris began fighting what appeared to be a small fish. Suddenly, his rod doubled over and line started to rip off his reel at a break-neck pace. All of us became excited. George grabbed the net. Eventually, the fish Chris was fighting slowed down, and he was able to gain some ground on it. His line was under the boat, and we couldn’t wait to see what was on the end of it. The last few cranks of Chris’ reel seemed too easy, and we thought he lost the fish. He pulled up a medium-sized sea bass. We noticed a sizable chunk missing from its tail. Chris had obviously been fighting a sea lion for this fish.
While watching the sea lions frolic in the water through the fog, we noticed something shiny mixed in with them. They moved a bit closer, and we realized that one sea lion had a huge coho by the back of the head. The sea lion dove, and Eric and I yelled to the others on the boat. Sure enough, the sea lion came up again, this time with the large silver salmon halfway down its gullet. I said to Capt. Hank, “I thought you said there weren’t any salmon around?” Eric said, “I’m glad to see someone catch a salmon.”
We were one fish shy of our limit, and we had to make a decision: keep fishing in hopes of reaching our limit or head in and start bringing in crab traps. We chose the latter.
As soon as we left the productive fishing areas, we were plunged back into sunlight. The sun felt good on our faces as we relaxed on the trip back.
About a half hour later, we reached the first crab trap. Capt. Hank showed us how to utilize the pulley to pull in the trap. It took four of us pulling on the line to haul the trap to the surface. As it breached the surface of the water, we all hung over the side to catch a glimpse. A collective “Wow!” rang out. It was loaded to the hilt with Dungeness crabs.
Eric asked, “What did you use for bait, George?”
“The good stuff,” George said.
Capt. Hank carried the full trap to the stern and dropped it. While the captain drove us towards the next trap, George showed us how to identify females and males that are too small, both of which need to be thrown back.
We spent the next hour switching between hauling in traps that were bursting with crabs and sorting through the crabs we had in the boat. The vast majority of the crabs were females, and Michelle was obsessed with getting them back in the water. However, she was a little scared of picking them up because their claws were big and powerful. Michelle spent a lot of time pointing out females to me so I could wrestle them free from the chicken wire and toss them back into the Columbia.
Eventually, all of the pots were in and sorted. We still had about a half-hour ride back to the marina. I asked Capt. Hank if, when we returned to shore and counted the crabs in the live well, we could throw back what was over our limit. He said that it is illegal to throw them back at the marina.
Back at the marina, George and Hank counted the crabs, and they realized that we were about 20 over our limit. The owner of the charter company came to the boat, and told them to give him the extra because he had several people with shell fishing licenses who would take them.
George hauled the crabs to the cookers. Eric helped put the raw crabs in the cookers and pull out the cooked crabs. Chris and I cleaned the cooked crabs while George filleted our fish.
Eric had to leave for Seattle while we were cleaning crabs. He said to Chris, “Give me a hug, Dad.” Chris reached around his son without touching him with his guts-covered hands. George, who was still filleting said, “Don’t ask me for a hug.”
After a 10-day trip to the Seattle area, seeing the sites, Michelle and I, reflecting back both agreed that our fishing trip out of Astoria was by far the highlight of the trip, even if it was bottom fishing.
Click here to see more photos that I took that day.
-- TV