Saga Is a Real Pot-Boiler : Combined Fishing/Crabbing Trips Anger Commercial Boats

Stepping aboard the Payback, it is easy to see that this will be no ordinary fishing trip.

On the stern deck of the 32-foot boat is a container of fish carcasses. Not your typical fish bait. On the starboard rail is a huge electric winch that looks as though it could haul in a whale.

Skipper Dave French is surely going after something big.

Or so it seems.

French soon makes it clear that he will use the carcasses and winch to catch small crabs before heading out to do some real fishing.

Despite their size, the crabs are becoming a big attraction in these parts. Combining crabbing with fishing is the latest rage among sport fishermen, who are using this relatively new approach to catch limits of fish and fill a bucket with Dungeness crab, maybe the tastiest critter ever to come out of a pot of boiling water.

“Some of the sea’s best,” LeRoy Howard says of the Dungeness crab. “For $50 (the price of a boat ticket), if you limit both ways (on the fish and crabs), it’s a good deal. You can’t beat it.”

Under a cloudy sky, French arrives off a sandy stretch of beach north of Bodega Bay. Using a long gaff, he snags one of several white buoys stretched in a crooked line up the coast and attaches the rope beneath the buoy to the winch, hits the switch and pulls up a steel-mesh trap full of lively crabs.

Avoiding their pincers, he tosses them into a large cooler. The smaller crabs and a purple starfish in the trap are tossed overboard.

Tom Pasquin, who says his wife sent him on this trip specifically for the crabs, re-baits each trap. Warren Darrah holds the gaff. Jim Brower, without a chore, pokes his head into the middle of things. Howard stands at the helm.

With the help of these passengers, French proceeds from buoy to buoy until the last pot is hauled up, emptied and baited again. With 35 crabs in the cooler, French says he will return to try to fill everyone’s 10-crab limit after a few hours at the outer banks.

“We’re ready to fish now,” he says, setting a course for Cordell Banks, 25 or so miles offshore. “It’s time to fly.”

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The Payback is one of three commercial sportfishers that give fishermen a chance to do a little crabbing on the side. The Tracer, also out of Lawson’s Landing at Dillon Beach, and the New Florie S out of Bodega Bay are the others.

Demand for space on all three boats--at a time of year when rough weather and spotty fishing used to keep them at the docks on many days--is at a premium. Landing operators are pinching themselves, business is so good.

“I haven’t had a day off since January,” says Will Morrow, owner of the Payback and Tracer. “One day I got 67 calls, and I used to get six or seven.”

Says Kevin Quigley, skipper of the New Florie S: “We’ve hauled over 1,000 passengers since the first of the year. It’s definitely going to catch on. It took off here like wildfire. Others are interested in it and others are already getting started.”

This is all well and good for the landings, and for the economy of the region in general, but not everyone is happy. In fact, some are downright crabby over the new operations.

Commercial fishermen, who for years have basically had the crab fishery to themselves, suddenly feel threatened. Should other sportfishing landings add crab pots and winches to their vessels, longtime crabbers say they might soon feel the pinch.

In a letter to the California Department of Fish and Game, Chuck Wise, president of the Bodega Bay Fishermen’s Marketing Assn. and a member of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Assn., uses simple arithmetic to express the concerns of commercial crabbers:

“One party boat with 20 passengers times 10 crabs per person (the limit), will catch 200 crab per day. Conservatively, the boat fishes three days a week for 600 crab for a week, times four weeks equals 2,400 crab a month. That’s one boat, times an eight-month season. That’s 19,200 crab.”

Wise’s letter goes on, stating that if other fleets up and down the coast join in the crabbing effort, the crab fishery will suffer immeasurably.

Another gripe among commercial fishermen is that sport-caught crabs can be male or female and only have to measure 5 3/4 inches across, whereas commercially caught crabs have to be male only and measure at least 6 1/4 inches across.

“We feel those smaller crabs are our young studs for next year,” says Beverly Burton, 60, whose family has been fishing in the Bodega Bay area for 30 years. “Everybody has a right to the fishery, but I want that fishery for my grandchildren. We have to protect it.”

John Duffy, senior marine biologist for the DFG in Sacramento, says there is no immediate cause for concern, but he added that the department never expected anything like this. Crabbing among recreational fishermen has always been limited to a small number of pier fishermen and private boaters.

Duffy said the DFG plans to examine the methods used by fishermen aboard sportfishers to see if they meet DFG requirements. Those requirements are vague, stating only that the gear must be regulation and that each fisherman must have only one pot.

“If they’re using (winches) to haul in the crabs and then just filling the buckets of fishermen until they have their limits, or if they’re leaving the crab pots out overnight, well, then how much is the fisherman actually participating?” Duffy says. “That’s something we’re going to have to look at. We also are willing to meet with commercial and recreational user groups to see if existing laws are inappropriate.”

Meanwhile, the phones will keep ringing at the landings and fishermen, in the words of Morrow, “will get more for their investment, more bang for their buck.”

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Those aboard the Payback, after an hour-long ride over a glassy sea, past leaping porpoises and salmon fishermen trolling or mooching closer to shore, finally get a chance to wet a line.

Using heavy iron jigs fished at depths of 400 to 600 feet, anglers begin pulling in rockfish of all colors, shapes and sizes, some with air bladders, bloated because of the pressure change, protruding from their mouths. Canary rockfish, bocaccio, widow bass and olive rock fish, to name a few species that thrive on this six-by-three-mile bank, soon litter the deck.

Gulls and black-footed albatrosses dive at one fish that escapes Brower’s hook, but its bladder is so bloated the birds can’t get it off the surface. Shaking its tail from time to time, it floats off toward the horizon, followed and harassed by the relentless birds.

Brower, 58, a general contractor from Sacramento, says he would rather be fishing for salmon.

“I used to fish for salmon farther up north, but they ran me out because I caught too many fish,” he says.

Nobody’s going to run Brower out of this town. French has to help Brower pull in his first catch, which Brower insists is a large lingcod. It turns out to be only a small rockfish. Brower gets the hang of hauling in fish from such depths, though, and soon has six or seven.

“I remember the days when you would use 15 hooks and reel in 15 fish,” he says.

By mid-afternoon, everyone is close to the 15-fish limit. French says it’s time to go and fires up the Payback, setting a course for the crab pots.

As the 32-foot boat chugs on over the rolling swells, Brower continues on a roll of his own.

“Once down in Mexico, I was on a 10-day trip and I fished every single day, 24 hours a day,” he says. Noticing a few skeptics in the crowd, he adds, “I’m not kidding you. I’m not!”

Next thing you know, Brower will be telling his friends how he went fishing for rockfish at the outer banks and his group came back with enough crabs to feed a small city. But then, that may not be stretching the truth too much. The city could be Dillon Beach, population 500.