Can we catch shrimp with just one pot off Hat Island?

Today my wife Viktoria came with me on our second attempt to go shrimping. You might recall that two weeks ago a friend and I tried this not far from Deception Pass, but I stupidly brought a 200-foot rope by accident and we couldn’t find the bottom. I had planned to duplicate the same game plan today, but Fish and Wildlife unexpectedly closed 7 South. So this time we hit my home waters in Area 8-2. In that area we were limited to a four-hour window from 9:00 to 1:00.

We launched about 7:45, plenty early to study various areas with the fish finder in advance. I decided on an area just east of Hat Island near Everett. Within minutes of the 9:00 bell, a whole line of yellow buoys appeared, stretching from the south tip of Hat Island, along the eastern side, along the underwater saddle between Hat Island and Camano, and along the east side of Camano. There’s a long underwater cliff there, with the foot of it right around 300 feet deep. The western side of these two islands has a similar topography, except that the bottom is around 500 feet there, too deep for most people’s liking.

After we dropped our single pot, I moved the boat to shallower water near the shore and set up a rod for my wife to fish sand dabs with. She caught a couple and tossed them back. After just 45 minutes we decided to pull our pot, so that we’d know as soon as possible if was a good place or not. It seemed to take forever to bring the pot up. When it finally breached the surface, I was elated to see that it contained maybe three or four dozen prawns! However, hoisting the heavy pot aboard was far more difficult than we imagined. I had the pot weighted with 30 pounds of old window weights, and the harness put it just out of my reach. It was hard on my fragile back to get it up over the gunnel, especially without scraping up the hull. My wife was of little help because of her shoulder injury. We did manage to get it aboard, but we watched in frustration as shrimp started jumping out of the pot while we struggled with it.

After counting our shrimp and taking trophy photos, we dropped again. This time we decided to run out to Langley, maybe 15-20 minutes away, for a bathroom break. When we came back an hour had passed, so we pulled again. We didn’t have quite as many shrimp as before, but it still wasn’t a bad pot. We counted 61 in total, obviously not counting the ones that managed to escape at the surface. Some other boaters saw my wife counting the shrimp and commented that they had caught very few, and they had multiple pots. Another guy with a 1979 Boston Whaler came over just to check out my new Whaler, and see how I had mine set up. He also reported catching very few. We felt lucky. He actually came alongside and showed me the knack of removing the heads.

There was enough time for one more drop, but my wife pleaded with me to go home rather than risk injuring myself again. We definitely need to get a better system. She suggested that next time I should bring one of my young strong friends along instead of her. Still, it was a truly great experience to share with her this time. Although we were well short of our limit, we were quite content with our newbie catch. We had enough for a couple of good meals. After finishing the dirty job of plucking all the heads off the prawns, we headed back to port.

The next day I made a shrimp scampi out of about half our catch. My wife normally eats very little, but when she got that in front of her she lost all control. She devoured her whole plate and came back for seconds. Now she wants me to pounce on it next year.