P.S.
Two seasons ago I tried shrimping for the first time ever. I only had a small Crawdad trap wieghted with 10lbs. of lead and gave it my best shot! My friend which has cabins up on Orcas Island took a few of us out on his annual cruise of the whole chain of Islands which takes nearly 3+ hours. We stopped in a channel on the west side of Orcas between another finger island just to the south. The tide was just coming in and when I went to set the pot it literatly went down at a 45o angle and was carried away very quickly! Finally it settled in about 120' of water in the current(thanks to the 10lbs. of wieght we put in it)!The bootom was odviously sandy. We headed out to do some exploring in the area and arrived back to the area some 2 hours later and almost didn't find it. We searched with binoculars and one of us finally spotted the bright yellow bouy some 1/2 mile from were we had originally set it! I grabbed the weighted rope and began to pull it up carefully....when it reached the surface there were shrimp in it but not many, and had concluded the funnels in the ends was just too big.(Funny thing is all shrimp pots sold are just large crawdad traps and sold as Shrimp pots!)
We counted over 15 or so and then headed back to his cabins (The boats captin, Mike) on the water down the bay. I then got out the fishing regs after arriving and determined that there were 4 different species of shrimp in the San Juans; Humpy, Coonstripe, Spot, & Dock shrimp. The first three were what we had caught in the channel, and the 4th. species was known to inhabit tidal flats and pools clinging and feeding on the rocks in shallower bays. The next day i decided to set this same pot near my crab traps and I ended up catching a few of these smaller Dockshrimp Too. So to sum it up I had caught all four species in one trip! Man are they cool looking for the first time seeing them alive... I can't what to try it again...



Edited by - Lady Grouse Hunter on 03/11/2002 23:40:48