The traps are already down….

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…from the day before.

At about ten in the morning (it’s raining today but that seems only fair) when we don our gear.  Sal gets on like Capt. Highliner.  Wet gear, hand warmers, double this, extra that. Really cute toque.  Looks capable of high seas crab-fishing in Alaska…in the winter.  I go knowing that I am going to get wet and being okay with that.

Getting geared up

On our way over, we stop to mist the mushrooms (it is raining but the spores are indoors and not going anywhere fast.  Suspect a case of dead spores?).  Then we stop to measure up a small construction job.  By 10:30 we are at the boat, engine running and loading on the barrel and bucket.

John’s prawn puller does all the heavy lifting

Five minutes later we are on the ‘spot prawn spot’ (local prawns are called Spot prawns because of their little white spots on the tail).  The prawning beds?  Prawn grounds?  Sal leans over the edge of the boat and hauls in the float and puts the line on the prawn puller.  Press the button.  Nada.  “Oops. I forgot to hook up the wires to the battery.”  A minute later, the first of three traps starts to come up.  I haul it over the gunwale.  Looks like twenty or thirty prawns.  When we quit a few minutes later, we have over 100 or so prawns after we sorted out out the females so as to set them free.  There are only three or four moms-in-waiting this time.

The first trap is up

But we have two strings down (one for each of us).  So a few minutes later, the second string is in and it yielded close to the first one.  We have just over 200 prawns.  The BC daily limit for one license is 200 prawns.  We did NOT make our limit of a theoretical 400.

Ready for beheading

There are roughly 20 prawns to the pound so we have ten solid pounds.  We are soon back at the dock doing the ‘beheading’ and tidying up the gear. By 11:30, I am sitting at the computer drinking tea and writing this up.  One hour.  One and a half hours all in.  Two at the most (it wasn’t two but it could have been had we re-baited and re-set the traps).

Rinsed and sorted according to size

Special?  Not really.  We can do this a few times a year and be very happily ‘kept in prawns’ for our needs.  Our needs are not much.  Usually we have prawns when we have guests and/or sushi.  Still, when you think about it, we likely consume the equivalent of a pound a month.  No more than 15-30 lbs a year.  NOT a big deal but a nice addition to the family menu.

Ready for the freezer floating in water-filled  zip-lock bags

28 thoughts on “The traps are already down….”

  3. Yummy! Glad you threw the egg-laden ones back. Apparently not everyone does, nor does everyone stick to their legal limits. A shame. One day people will wonder what happened to all the prawns if that sort of disregard keeps up….I think you should stick to freezing them; drying prawns sounds like a poor way to enjoy them, just sayin’!

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    • Once a few years ago we hit our limit. Pulled up 400 plus in one 3-trap set. You are allowed four traps but that’s silly if you are limited by the number….anyway….we were so pleased at our bounty, we stopped prawning that year. So it was weird….that was the year we took the least amount primarily because of our first bountiful pull. Human nature, eh?
      But the problem is not the local guy with five traps who takes 500. It’s the commercial FLEET boats each with 300 traps that hit the resource like a hurricane and decimates the fishery for almost the year. Makes no sense to me to police some loca guy in a tin boatl when Godzilla has free reign.
      But, then again, nothing makes much sense to me anymore. Especially government. Especially DFO.
      How the hell did a dopey drama teacher who loves selfies become our chief decision maker? How did a spoiled imbecile with an orange combover become the world’s decision maker?
      How does our species even survive….?
      Oh, well……..

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      • I wonder all of those things myself….not to mention the poison that the fish farms use in their never-ending battle with the sea lice problem, the poison that also happens to decimate invertebrates like prawns. I wonder if that poison would work on invertebrates like the orange comb-over or the drama teacher?? Woops! And, by the way, IS our species really surviving? Doesn’t survival depend on the ability to evolve? As opposed to devolving? I fear it won’t be long now….food for thought? No, that’s what the prawns are for!

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      • The beaucrates run the government. A very deeply engrained culture exists among the beaucrates and a change of government does not change this beaucratic culture. Trump might fantasize about being the CEO of America but he can only get done what the beaucrates support. The beaucrates are unionized and have job descriptions that make it difficult for a Minister of the Crown to get what she wants with a directive or a policy statement. The strictures of a previous government are still to a certain extent operational. But the real obstacle to change is funding. Case in point in Norway and in Iceland the Atlantic cod stocks have returned to pre-nineteen forties numbers but not in Atlantic Canada even with a fishing moratorium. Norway and Iceland made investments in reviving the cod stocks but Canada did not.

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  4. They look great, Dave. Nothing like wild caught fresh prawns. We live inland so it is not even a remote possibility for us. Most of the prawns in shops come from Thai prawn farms. I wouldn’t want to deny them making a living, but those prawns taste terrible.

    Do you wash those plastic bags and reuse them?

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    • Don’t eat farmed prawns! OMG! Healthier to suck on PCBs.
      No. We do not do right by our baggies. We want to but we don’t. Seems freezing the bag somehow ruins the seal. We do re-use them but not for sealing water again. They leak. And that limits re-use.
      A better system would be to freeze them in large trays. Like ice cubes.
      But, we don’t.
      I blame Sal. No reason to blame her but she doesn’t know what I am writing so…..it’s her fault!

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  5. You must have a good sized freezer. Is it a solar model? We depend on propane for our fridge and our freezer section, while ample for enough meet for a month, wouldn’t handle lots of prawns. But that isn’t a problem we have. Lost our trap to the sea years ago and never replaced it. Not much chance of getting prawns in a 1000 foot deep fresh water lake. – Margy

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    • Don’t be surprised….but a lot of deep lakes have crayfish. Drop a trap and see…..you may have the equivalent of prawns.
      We have two freezers. One propane, one electric. We use both in the summer when we have guests and need to stock up and only the propane is used in the winter. In the summer, the electric is an easy load for the solar. Crayfish and Aquavit!

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      • Crayfish.
        Yep.
        Was in North Van way up near the top of the housing line in the mountains several years back and some local kids were poking arond in a small stream out back of a townhouse complex.
        Brought up some HUGE crayfish from the stream. Looked like big Tiger prawns. I couldnt believe the size of them. They found about 5 of them in about 20 ft of stream. Some had eggs on them so they put them back.
        Nice little ecology session for all of us.

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  6. “”How the hell did a dopey drama teacher who loves selfies become our chief decision maker? How did a spoiled imbecile with an orange combover become the world’s decision maker?””
    Was enjoying reading blog and comments, until this popped up. You just can’t get over that Trump is POTUS. It seems he is doing a fantastic, though nonconforming, job of it.

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    • It’s true, John, I am having a great deal of difficulty accepting an imbecile as POTUS or PM. Of course, I have to agree with part of what you are saying, he is doing a transformative job. But so would a crack-head. Transformative is not the same as good, you know. Trump is a crook and should be locked up!
      That’s lame, tho. Even if true.
      What I don’t understand is how reasonable people can support him just because he is non traditional, rude, bigoted, ignorant, illl educated and egotistic. How does that work?
      Look. See. There is no wall. The poor got no tax break. Obamacare has been gutted with no replacement. He’s kicking Canada. He’s kicking Mexico. No one will work for him. He’s started a trade war and just about every foreign country hates him. How does that work for America? For you?
      Seriously, John…..you want change. You want an end to PC nonsense. You hate the deep state and the myriad other conspiracies. You probably even want an end to brown people living in Canada and black tar goop staying in the ground when it belongs in the Gulf of Georgia. Albertans don’t like fish. I get that. But does that mean you love idiocy?
      Glad you liked the blog, tho.

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  8. Not to worry the re-boot of the Rose-Anne Barr show Is peddling the fake altnews spin. A bot in Russia is writing her scripts pledging her uncritical love for the comb over. Rose-Anne has an excuse, she smokes weed. Lucid, logical, reflective…so what is their excuse?

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    • Well, Rosie is a whacko but she ain’t stupid. Good marketing. Like DJT, she can draw a crowd. But not good politics. She repeated a lot of truly fake alt-right news and had to retract it……things like sex slaves and crap…..
      ….but her REAL legitimate position is, “Hey! No one wants our president to fail! Agree or not, we want him to succeed.”

      I’d like to see him gone and prosecuted but thats just personal.

      I am not keen on him or his methods but, if he could humanely get immigration under some semblance of control, you can’t argue with that. Thats a country’s right. If he could reinvigorate USA domestic industry and economy, I’m ok with that. I even think China does cheat.

      So….he’s wrong in oh so many ways but some of the basic motivations are understandable and one or two (like the broken clock) might be right. Even an ignorant bully can fight for the right thing…that’s an integral part of the stupid gene. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He resonates with John and Rosie because their instincts agree with him. Their brains are ill informed like his but their guts tell them YES…..so, they vote their gut. The simple folk.

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  9. Trump’s critique of the trade imbalances is really is a critique of Capitalism. The USA likes to buy cheap goods from the People’s Republic of China. Pure capitalism. American entrepreneurs have their goods made in low wage economies. Buy low and sell high. By not paying many Americans a living wage and sending manufacturing jobs off shore has hollowed out the Americas middle class.Trump blames China for this but the real issue is entrepreneurial greed. The glaring evidence of this is the growing gap between the middle class and the wealth that export American jobs off shore.plus many Americas want cut rate goods.

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    • Might be. Depends. Who was the tenant? A Russian, perhaps?
      A relative of Jeff Sessions? The bodyguard lover of Melania? My guess? The deceased was an innocent who, in his or her sacrifice, sent the president a message. “Don’t mess with us, Donald!”
      And the Donald will comply.

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