Crabbing on the Oregon Coast

Birds, boats and bait.

Portland is the catbird seat of adventure, mountains to the East and coast to the West. This past weekend friends invited us to go crabbing in Tillamook Bay. We setout from Portland early in the morning and launched the boat from Garibaldi. Over the course of 5 hours we “limited out”.

Pelican on the dock. Mountains and clouds in the background.

Scent is the key to crabbing. We used fresh chicken bits with great succes.

The traps were loaded with dungeness crab everytime.

Each crab was measured to determine if it was a “keeper”. The “love gloves” made handling these critters lovely.

Flock of birds would hang out near the boat waiting for you to throw out used bait.

Birds following the boat.

We set 8 traps then shuttled between them pulling out crabs and re-setting the traps. Our GPS track looked like a ball of twine.

That’s a 21' boat we’re towing with this Adventure van.

Limited out so we headed back.

Our booty! Rougly $750 worth of dungeness crab.

We had the crabs cooked right on the dock.

Steamy fresh crabs and an ice cold beer.

Keep reading and check out our mountain adventures.