How to Trap Shrimp!

The shrimp in Desolation Sound are this B-I-G! That is what two independent and reliable Sources have told her. The caveat then follows that it all depends upon the year, which she ignores because this is going to be her year. She can feel it!

Last year when we sailed into Desolation Sound armed with all the paraphernalia one needs to catch crabs, we were told that there were no crabs in Desolation Sound. No CRABS! How could that be? She imagined some kind of deep sea sign out there warning crabs not to trespass, but it turns out that the waters (at a balmy 55 or so degrees) are too warm for crabs. Refusing to be so easily put off, she baited her crab trap and dropped it in Okeover Bay, where she was told (perhaps out of pity) that any crab that crawled into Desolation Sound would head over to Okeover Bay. No luck.

It was obvious that shrimp abounded in Desolation Sound, for fleets of shrimp boats were out there everywhere, and with envy, she watched them pull in their traps. We like shrimp, and she imagined each and every one of those traps full of those luscious morsels. Gambas al Ajillo: Shrimp delicately sautéed with Garlic. “Oh, Bill, just imagine if we had a shrimp trap,” she enthused. “NO,” he declared emphatically. “You already have a bulky crab pot with some 75 feet of line and a float attached. We have a deep sea fishing rod and all sorts of fishing gadgets. All this stuff takes up room. This is a SAILBOAT. We are not part of the fishing fleet. End of discussion.” Can’t you just hear him?

Well, that was last year, and as a fine red wine mellows with age, so, too, has The Captain of the sailing vessel Avante. After much pleading and before we set forth on our trek around Vancouver Island, with a sigh of resignation, he told her to go buy the“damn trap”. Which she did. The Captain flew off to Chicago for a board meeting, and The First Mate flew into the car and headed off in search of a shrimp trap and whatever else one needs to catch shrimp. Such information proved as difficult to gather as “How to Catch Fish and Trap Crabs” did last year. She has decided that up here in the Pacific Northwest this procuring of food from the sea is a male activity, for in every shop that she enters, all the Sources of Information are men. She has yet to find a woman who knows anything about this sport, if sport it be. It has been from men that she has had to pull such information, and no man out there will ever tell you that he only knows part of the story. Therefore, going in search of “How to Trap Shrimp” information takes time, energy, patience and a good sense of resigned acceptance of erroneous fiction as fact.

She finds a likely store and inquires “What does one need to trap shrimp?” The male Source tells her that one cannot use the same trap as one uses to trap crabs. That would be too easy. Since shrimp are smaller than crabs, the mesh of the trap must be smaller and, more importantly, the opening into the trap has to be smaller, or one’s shrimp will escape in high glee after eating all the bait one has so assiduously placed there for them. Thus, another trap will have to be added to the stuff stored in the lazarette. She chooses one that is only slightly bigger than the crab trap when folded. The Captain should be somewhat mollified.

Onto the counter goes the trap and the weight that comes with it. Next comes a bait box. Then comes the rope, an item she had been dreading because she had heard that she would need a minimum of 300 feet of sinkable rope. Her Source shows her the correct rope to use: one that somehow has lead laced into it. Lead? How is she ever going to pull that rope and the trap full of shrimp to the surface? He tells her that it isn’t that bad and that she actually only needs 250 feet. It takes forever for him to real off that 250 feet. Assuming she can pull 18 inches up on one pull, that is 166.6666 pulls. Her trainer back in Telluride will love the upper body strengthening if she doesn’t drop dead first. The only item left to put on the counter is a float, but this store is out of floats. The Source tells her that one of the two hardware stores in town will have a float. Her bill for trap, bait box and leaded rope is $110. Not bad, she supposes. She sure better catch a lot of shrimp.

Off to the first hardware store. No luck. The second store offers to sell her a 3-foot round orange ball. This hardware store Source says that it is the best because it is so visible. Maybe so, but it will not fit in the lazarette, and The Captain will certainly not allow anything like this to be hung off the side of Avante. The man has no other floats for her but directs her to a kind of marine second-hand store. A faded orange tubular float of the right size is bought. She is elated. She has saved money. The second-hand float is $10.00 instead of $25.00 new.The second-hand store Source, however, quite gravely, gives her the unwelcome news that 250 feet of rope is not enough. She will need at least 350 feet! One starts shrimping at 250 feet, and one can and should shrimp deeper than that, especially in Desolation Sound. Now what should she do? She cannot simply hide the too-short rope and buy 350 feet. She decides that The Captain is just going to have to use his rope tying skills. Off she goes to another marine store. This new Source listens to her plight and suggests that she does not need 100 feet more of the leaded rope. She can use a less expensive (like that word) and lighter (even better word) rope with a weight added (don’t like that word) to make sure the whole mess sinks so no boat propeller gets tangled in it – most of all, Avante’s. He tells her that this is what many shrimpers do to cut down on weight. Sounds reasonable to her – so $30.00 later, she is finally all set to trap shrimp. That’s $150 worth of shrimp catching stuff. The critters had better be out there.

Her final purchase for the day is a Canadian fishing license, but she does not add this to the cost of catching shrimp since this license covers all manner of sea life she is in search of: crab, salmon, halibut and shrimp. She is now completely and fully ready to harvest our food from the bounty of the sea.

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Saturday, June 7th – We leave Montague Harbour with our power-hungry but not efficiently power-producing boat and head off to explore more of the Gulf Islands. On the way out, we stop to retrieve our crab trap which has been sitting for 2 and 1/2 days. No crabs! Just one big ugly sunstar! How disappointing.

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The anchorage at Wallace Island is more exposed than we like, so we weigh anchor and motor to Clam Bay. Here, without our usual prolonged discussion and analysis of the best crab location, we simply drop our crab trap off the stern after anchoring. After all, this is Clam Bay, not Crab Cove.

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Prior to entering Canoe Cove, we painstakingly chose a spot for the trial run of the new shrimp trap. With acrobatic aplomb, The First Mate dances through an impossible tangle of rope, weights and feet. Miraculously, she manages to launch the trap into the water without sending herself with it. The Captain is aghast. The trap, however, was not and dutifully sank in 250 feet to the ocean floor with the float bobbing above to mark its location. We each mark, in his or her own way, the location of that happily bobbing float and continue on into Canoe Cove to fix the alternator. The trap will be down the whole time we are in the marina. Left down there for a few days as is the best practice for trapping these critters, it should be full of shrimp when we haul it up.

Tuesday, June 10th – In the early afternoon, we leave Canoe Cove with our repairs completed. Avante’s spare alternator has been modified to fit the mounting bracket and has been installed on the Yanmar diesel engine with new longer belts to fit its wider pulleys. The Captain’s conclusions regarding the failed alternator were confirmed, and it will be rebuilt with increased output and new pulleys that match the ones on the replacement alternator. It will be waiting upon our return in July. While fixing things, we upgraded our voltage regulators with newer models that display real time system information. So, the battery charging system is better than before. Avante is purring along beautifully and putting out that all important battery charge. She is set! We are set!

We motor out to our shrimp trap or to where we each in his/her own way think the trap is. It is not there. We scan the area. The binoculars are in high demand. We decide we need two binoculars on board. A “His” and a “Hers” for His eyes are different from Her eyes, and binoculars in such situations are not easily shared. There are several bright orange round floats out there — the kind of float that the hardware store Source told her was the kind to buy because they were highly visible. Should have listened. Where is our faded orange second-hand tubular shaped float? Nowhere. Did it sink? Was it stolen? Who would do that? We circle around relieved that no one is near us to watch this scene. Finally, way off in left field, as far as both the navigators are concerned, we spot the float. It is about 500 yards from where we thought we dropped it. A faded orange tubular float has limited visibility bobbing around on the great wide ocean, but how could she have guessed? We motor over. The First Mate has a very difficult time getting the hook under the float to catch the rope, but catch it she finally does. She begins to haul all 350 feet of rope onto the deck. It is not that heavy. She can do this, but the next thing she knows, The Captain is taking over, not capable of standing there watching all that rope come so very slowly aboard. The First Mate’s job now is to coil the rope as it is being hauled in, but it is coming in faster than she can coil, and it doesn’t want to coil the way she wants it to coil. The rope has a mind of its own! Again, she is a tangle of rope, weights and feet. Plus it smells, and it’s wet. It’s a mess, but the shrimp will be worth it. Just wait –The following photos tell it all.

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