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[TimL]

I headed out early this morning for a day of shore crabbing and bottom fishing at one of my usual spots in the Port Moody area. The tide forecast calls for an incoming tide in the morning, peaking at around 1 pm. I first headed to the beach to gather some sea worms for fishing bait. Unfortunately the tide did not recede far enough for me to acquire enough natural bait, so I stuck with store-bought shrimp that I brought with me.
Crabbing overall was slow during the first few hours, with many undersized and female dungeness and plenty of large red rock crabs.




One measured to about 6 inches carapace width, which is the biggest I have seen so far:


Interestingly, the legal dungeness only started to appear in the traps shortly after the tide changed (to ebb). Caught my last 2 dungeness in 1 trap just as I was packing up to leave! So I ended with 4 keepers for the day...released all the red rocks



Bottom fishing was still a tad slow for this location but has picked up since the last time I fished here (2 weeks ago). Kept 3 fish for the day (1 of everything- perch, flounder, greenling). There were many striped sea perch seen swimming around the rocks as the tide came in, but today, few were interested in my offerings. However I was able to finally nab one on a small piece of shrimp:



Ignoring the perch, I decided to focus my efforts on getting some flatfish. I first tried a small spinner-bait combo slowly retrieved on the bottom. Got into 4-5 of these speckled sanddabs, which were then released:



There was a lull when the tide approached slack..then the tide started to ebb...I then switched my tackle back to the standard bait fishing rig that I usually use. As I was slowly trolling the bait towards shore, I felt a light tap and then the rod tip went down..I set the hook, reeled in and out came a decent sized rock sole:



Not long after, this was followed by a 9 inch whitespotted greenling.


Also, I happened to spy a twig close to the surface that was swimming suspiciously like a fish. As it approached the rock that I was standing on, I reached out and caught it by hand- it was a bay pipefish! Took a quick photo of it before releasing it back into the sea.  These fish are close relatives of the sea horse.


To conclude it was a great day to be out by the water..the bonus of bringing back fresh seafood made it even better...

[Flytech]

Thanks for the info. Please consider not putting fish on the rocks that you are releasing. That is mishandling fish and actually illegal.

[RyanB]

Thanks for the report.  I've been itching to get back out there!

[TimL]

Flytech: I apologize if I offended you or others on the site. I get carried away sometimes when taking photos. I will try to be more aware of such things in the future.

Ryan: There's still a good month of crabbing left before the commercial season begins. Am planning on heading out again tomorrow morning!

[Flytech]

Flytech: I apologize if I offended you or others on the site. I get carried away sometimes when taking photos. I will try to be more aware of such things in the future.

I am not offended at all, it's your business what you do. I was merely informing you that it is illegal to mishandle fish you are releasing. You are putting the fish at risk of mortality when you do that. Their protective slime can be removed and they are susceptible to disease and death. Not to mention suffocation, bruising, etc.


If the fish is something you're not planning or isn't legal to keep, release it in the water don't even pull it out. If you must have a photo, lift the fish with your wet hands only for a couple seconds, snap the photo and get the fish back in the water.


We all make mistakes.