Crabbing in Netart Bay-Oct 26, 2019

I was really excited. Kate and Dan were taking Frank and me crabbing out on the Oregon Coast. They had gone a year ago and their whole party each caught their individual limit of 12 Dungeness crabs each. We were hopeful that we would come home to feast on our 48 crabs. Maybe crab cakes or even eating them out of the shells. We’d decide later.

It took about two hours to get to the coast. Kate had reserved a boat with an outboard engine. At first the owner of the boat was reluctant to rent since none of us had had an experience driving with an outboard motor, but Dan convinced him that he had a lot of experience with engines growing up on a farm and was confident he could handle it.

Captain Dan navigating our boat on the bay.

There were a lot of boats crabbing by the wall in the bay. Each buoy had a crab pot under it.

Here Frank and I are in the positions we remained during our crabbing adventure. We weren’t much help.

This is one of our buoys. We had NB 302, NB 306, and NB 307. The idea was to throw a crab pot in the water, spacing all three at different spots. Then coming back to the first one 15 minutes later, pulling it back up and checking for crabs, etc. We were given a measuring device. If the crab wasn’t as wide as the gauge, it had to be thrown back. Also only males were legal to catch.

Kate was in charge of pulling up the crab traps. It was a watery, messy affair. We were always hopeful that when she pulled up the trap there would be crabs galore. I could just taste those crab cakes as we anticipated our catch.

Here is one of crab traps with a few unhappy crabs. None of these were big enough. Oh, darn it! We got excited a few times thinking that some were big enough only to find out they weren’t.

Here a crab fell out of the trap and Frank had to grab it from the back to toss him back. None in this trap were keepers. Our luck up to this point had not been good.

It was a beautiful, sunny day. It was fun watching the seagulls fighting over pieces of bait (chicken) that had come loose from the crab traps. They made quite a racket with their feeding frenzy.

Throwing in the crab pots and hauling them back out was the main activity. Since our catch always had crabs that were too small, our enthusiasm was dwindling. Kate’s hands were getting cold with no reward in sight.

Then to add to the frustration, we were unable to find buoy NB 302. Dan took us up and back by the rock wall of the bay several times, but we could not find the missing buoy. We knew we would be charged $40 for any lost traps, so we returned to the dock in a somewhat subdued mood. Not only did we not catch any “keeper” crabs, we were now minus a trap to boot!

Here are Captain Dan and first mate Kate waiting for the owner to show up with his trailer to take the boat back to the Netart’ s Marina.

Dan did a great job navigating the boat back and forth along the bay. No one seemed to be catching much that morning. Our luck changed though as about an hour after we left the marina, Kate got a call from the office saying that one of the other boats in their fleet had found missing NB 302!

After our crabbing adventure, we were very close to the town of Tillamook. In this neck of the woods Tillamook = cheese factory. Frank and I had stopped at the factory about 10 years ago when we visited Oregon to visit our son Matt when he sang in the Oregon Bach Fest in Eugene. Since then, they have designed and opened a new visitor’s center called the Tillamook Creamery which is attached to the factory.

We were really hungry so we went to their food court to make our order. Fried milk curds, tomato soup with curds, grilled cheese, macaroni and cheese were ordered as well as a hamburger with fries for Frank. I had never tasted deep fried curds before. I was surprised how tasty they were. I gobbled more than my share. Sorry no picture of this extremely greasy treat. Just think of how yummy french fries are at a country fair to imagine that “let’s have just one more” flavor.

After our lunch we took the self guided tour through the factory. Even though it was a Saturday, the production lines were working. Since the factory is open 7 days a week, I think they probably have a small number of workers on the weekend shifts.

Here the blocks of cheese are weighed and if they aren’t two pounds they are taken off the conveyor belt. We saw one of the workers putting extra layers on the rejected blocks. They are then sent to cold storage for the aging process.

Some hands on activities were available for the younger set. There were stations for bottle feeding a calf as shown above and hooking up a milk machine to a cow’s udder. At my request, Dan and Kate posed for the picture above.

With full tummies, we headed back to Portland. The winding roads were not a big hit with my stomach full of fried curds. I am happy to report that I did not need to ask Kate or Dan to pull over to the side of the road, but I was really glad when we returned to Kate’s house.

Not much supper was needed, although now Capt. Dan turned into Chef Dan and fried some tasty taco meat for us. We had taken a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of Fallingwater as a gift, and this now called to the jigsaw enthusiasts. (Meantime I worked on my blog and fell asleep.) Being out in that fresh salty air is very tiring. In spite of our lack of a bountiful catch, we had a fun day trying our hand at crabbing, even though Frank and I were no help at all. Thank goodness our hosts have been very patient in introducing us to crabbing.

One Reply to “Crabbing in Netart Bay-Oct 26, 2019”