Crabbing

If we're up in Washington during crab season, we always try our hand at catching some crab. Alan's parents have this crab cage, which we (and by we I mean Alan and his dad) bait with chicken parts. Then they take it out on a kayak and drop in in the water for the day. Our first attempt was not terribly successful. We got 3 crabs of the appropriate size, but they were the wrong gender and we had to throw them back. Apparently, checking the crabs is the worst part. They resist removal from the cage and do a lot of pinching. Even with gloves, its intimidating.

A few days later, we hit the jackpot. We caught 3 large male crabs. On the same day, some family friends donated their day's catch to our family - and they caught 7. So we ended up with 10 crabs! It took Alan over an hour to get the meat out of the left over crab from that night. We ate a lot of crab over the next few days. Fortunately we had some visitors that helped out a bit. Now we're ready for a crab hiatus for awhile.

Here's everyone checking out the catch in the orange bucket. The other kids are cousins.

Alan spent some time with his cousin teaching him how to paddle.

Amara took good care of Ethan on this trip out.

Ethan in the kayak, awake! We have numerous pictures of Ethan conked out in the kayak. He did fall asleep on another boat ride we took, but not on the kayaks this year.