First Commercial Chinook caught *legally* off Oregon in several years. They're running deep to 36 fathoms so the F/V Harvester isn't setup to run so deep. We're back to crabbing till they come up a bit. Still nice to see some actual salmon hit the deck!

Catching Salmon off Winchester Bay Oregon for the first Salmon Season in a few years. Tyler pulls a nice one in.

We've sold out of plain and smoked Albacore Tuna (thank you very much!). The Albacore should be off Oregon here in a month (ish) and once they show up be sure we'll be out there fishing for them. Till then we've got some flavored cans (garlic pesto & jalapano Albacore ) and canned Dungeness crab still in stock.

So just hold on for the 2010 Albacore season .. we'll be on the fish as soon as we can!!

cheers

-Capt. Tyler and F/V Harvester Crew

7 fish Sunday 7 fish Monday 0 fish Tuesday

We went out on Sunday and got the bugs worked out, boat ran really well. It's been really slow for everybody bad trolling conditions, nine foot swell at 10 seconds and a lot of wind on top of it. The boats are moving around so much we can't keep a consistent speed which is really important. On top of that the Salmon are deep, 80 fathoms (480 feet) smaller boats like the Harvester can't run all the lines that deep or they'll get tangled up, so we have to run two wires at a time. The guys did good, Bert being a green horn to salmon fishing but catching on quick.

The market is hot. Earth quake in Chili screwed up a lot of fish farming, and the Iceland volcano didn't do any favors for the North Sea farmers either. The price is about six bucks a pound average, worth over 100 dollars a fish. We got a few 25 lbers the first day, but the first night we didn't even sleep starting at the Umpqua and heard some guys on the cape got 15 so we ran all night and got another seven. Got a couple of Halibut -- we're on the incidental Halibut license so we can keep 1 Halibut (32 inches or larger) for every 3 Salmon but we're out of the long line Halibut season for this year (if you recall we got skunked last year anyway). This will let us have fresh halibut when the market is good, rather than doing the crazy 10 hour halibut season.

The season is wide open till the end of June then there are six days of closure in July and some time in August. No fish limits.

The weather looks good for Salmon on Friday with 3 foot swells, till then we're back to crabbing and we still need to get those 70 pots stuck on the beach that got swept up in the last storm.

We've got some video and pics in the can but haven't had time to get them processed. So stay tuned for that.

Stacy and Linsey will be at the Eugene Farmers Market this weekend with some of our fresh smoked Salmon so keep an eye out for them!

Cheers

-The Harvester

We decided to gamble and have a friend of ours in a bigger boat haul our traps out for the opener, rather than having to do it over 4 days with the Harvester. We can only carry 80 or so traps at a time so this let us set all 300 to soak at once. The weather was piss flat the crabs were active with the filling moon (Monday the 1st) full on the third and we had a good supply of fresh Humboldt squid and razer clams from Hallmark Fisheries that really brought in the numbers. We chop up the Humboldt squid in the two bags which are the nylon mesh bag) and then the razor clams in the jars for the scent.

Video: 3 traps

The Catch:

This opener we were getting about 40 crab per trap for the first pull of 300 traps which was pretty incredible, since we only had 15 to 20 crab last year. The first three trips we pulled 50,000 lbs , after that it started slowing down. 17.5k, 16.7k and then a 6k on one run. We can run 300 pots in ten hours, pulled 9 times over the last five trips for about 30,000 crabs at at little over 72,000 lbs. Without a doubt the best opening weeks we've ever seen.

Why was the opener so great?

One of the things about this season that was abnormal was the weather. Most years the season starts with very rough weather giving a huge advantage to the big boats that can handle the big weather, forcing the little guys like us to risk short trips and run to shelter when things get bad. This year we were out in their face every day. We were spanking some of those larger boats and staying in their faces. It felt pretty good..
Feeling Good!
Another thing that helped was that so many crab were being caught all up and down the coast that no spot was getting over fished. Seemed like everywhere you went boats were scoring enough to stay where they were rather than plugging up the hot spots, so everybody had room to fish. We were able to compete and get more of a share of the volume because of the good weather I'm sure it mad the big boat owners grrr.

Now that the full moon has gone away the crab are not as active so we give the traps a little more soak time on the bottom. If the crab are more active and in higher numbers you can pull traps more often, but when they are slower you have let them sit longer. Why does the full moon make the crab active? Nobody knows for sure, but it seems to be true.

Video: missed a trap

What's going on down there?

The trap pulls in any crabs in the area due to the scent of the bait and they have escape rings that are big enough for the juvenile crabs and the females are able to escape, but the ones we want (the big mature males) are stuck. The big ones also chase off the little ones so the longer you can leave the trap in an active area while the bait is still good the larger better crab you're likely have in your pot.

Going back out.
Now we've had a good shot of rough weather with the recent storm we're hoping it will stir up the bottom and bring the numbers back up. When these winter storms roll through they create big swells that disturb the mud where the crab bed down and will scatter any food that's on the bottom which usually gets them up and moving. We're going out on tomorrow at 4:00 – the traps have been soaking for 2 days on a spot we hope will be good. Now the crab tend to bunch up around good food sources so we have to move traps pretty often to stay on top of em.

Full Tanks so we're deck loading

Going back out tomorrow we'll run the gear and areas that show good numbers are were we'll cork ourselves.. basically dump all the gear on the hot spots so the buoy's are nearly floating on top of each other.

So it's been a heck of a start of the season and pretty much every boat on the Oregon Coast has been pulling great numbers. It's a nice thing for everybody so get down to your local market and get you some nice local Dungeness.

Cheers

-Capt Tyler & the Harvester Crew

We've got 300 traps (dungie prisons) soaking on the bottom of the Pacific waiting for Midnight Tonight (Dec 1st) to be allowed to pull them. Be heading out in a few hours to start pulling once the clock strikes twelve and hope our boat doesn't turn into a pumpkin.

Hope to see LOTS of these

Stay tuned, we'll have video and reports as we get our first load offloaded with hopefully a chock full boat of fine fresh Dungeness crab ready for the cannery & your local fish monger.

UPDATE: Dec 2nd:

Best crabbing we've ever seen & the weather was great. We brought in 16,000 pounds -- The Harvester was overflowing with crab, in the hold, on the deck. We couldn't have gotten one more crab on the boat without dumping some of the crew (tempting ha ha). We're heading back out as the price is locked at $1.75 till tomorrow, when we think the price will probably go down, so we're trying to get as much in at that price as possible. It's GO GO GO for a week and then we'll get some video and pictures up. Pretty amazing start to the season.

cheers

UPDATE: Dec 4th:

Good lord !! 17,529 lbs second delivery day three. sush dont tell anyone!

UPDATE: Dec 6th

The crab count is over 50,000 lbs in five days. This is the already more than we caught for all of December last year. It's simply AMAZING
-Capt. Tyler & Harvester Crew

The Harvester is a 34 foot combination vessel, fishing for crab, salmon, albacore tuna and rock fish out of Charleston Oregon owned and operated by Tyler and Stacy Long &  Family committed to supporting sustainable fishing methods and dedicated to bringing the best from the ocean to you and your family. 

The Harvester

 Tuna Fishing:

Our albacore is landed on a foam pad to prevent bruising, then bled and placed in ice water to cool. The ice water also constricts blood veins to force the blood out. Then they are placed in ice in the fish hold. We deliver them to the Sportsmen's Cannery where they are filleted and hand packed into our 7.5 oz cans. There are no added oils or water, just the freshest albacore in its own natural juices. 

Dungeness Crab fishing:

The Season is  coming soon with Cousin Willy the green horn getting his first full season on the boat.  Crabbing in the heavy waters off Oregon is tough, but the bounty is well worth the struggle.  Stay tuned as we plan on offering up a selection of canned Dungeness crab that'll knock your socks off.  Leave the catching, picking and cleaning to us while you enjoy!