Around the opening weekend of shellfish harvesting season, we get together with the FFGS&ES crew (Ferry Friends Going Somewhere and Eating Something) and head out to catch some Dungeness and rock crab, oysters, and clams and then have a big beach potlatch! Chuck provides his boat 'Marie' for dropping the crabpots and hauling the 'crabbers' over to the clamming beaches.

From Chuck -"About crabbing - It's open year round. The difference is the gear that can be used.  Rings can be used all year.  Pots can not be used from April 15 - July 15. This is the period when they generally get soft, loose mass inside and molt. Then when they're trapped in the pot, a hard one will tear them up. The dates may vary slightly because of weekends but this real close to right.  The Washington Fish and Wildlife have a great website."

After dropping the crabpots in Hood Canal, we head for the beach and join the rest of the gang, who should already be digging clams, but is most likely waiting for us to get there. Digging clams is hard work! They are fast little buggers, and you have to follow the size regulations, so a lot of them get tossed back. Harvesting Seafood in the Northwest is as easy as going to a supermarket in your backyard. We took this picture of a pilot whale from Chuck's boat, with the Hood Canal Bridge in the background. The Washington State Department of Fish and wildlife requires a Food Fish License for taking cod, pollock, hake, flatfish, herring, anchovies, candlefish, sardines, lingcod, greenlings, mackerels, rockfish, sculpin, sea bass, shad, sharks, skates, surf and pile perch, halibut, salmon, and sturgeon. also, a salmon catch record is required for any migratory salmon fishing. Oysters are much easier to catch (they just lay on the beach in clumps), but you have to shuck the oysters on the beach, and getting those suckers open is a pain in the hand if that knife slips! With everbody digging and shucking, it doesn't take long to get a lot of shellfish gathered. For shellfish, a Shellfish/seaweed license is required to gather crabs, goosebarnacles, mussels, octopuses, oysters, razor clams, scallops, sea cucumbers, urchins, shrimp, squid, seaweed, and clams. We pick up the crabpots on the way back to Shine. Grabbing the crabpots is fun (remembering where you dropped them is not). The usual haul per pot is one good-sized keeper. After the boat crew pulls in the crab and helps Chuck pull his boat out of the water, we head over to Kitsap Memorial State park to cook up the seafood and party! The Hood Canal was carved by advances of massive ice sheets hat flowed over the area over a period of 1.5 million years. When the temperatures warmed and the glaciers retreated, massive lakes were created. As the glacial melt freed the Stait of Juan de Fuca of ice, the waters of the region rushed into the sea, carving the landscape and mixing with seawater.