rogerdodger
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I put this "CrabCondo" together last June to try and put a poorly performing trap to better use.
We use mostly the 24"x24" box traps that are very common, economical, and perform well. We also had one smaller (18" X 18") box trap that would not always lay flat on the bottom, light current could tilt it up, it would commonly come up totally empty in an area of good crab, clearly not working as a "trap". I tried adding some rebar to the bottom for weight but still had issues with it, plus it was really too small to leave for a long soak (while trolling for salmon, which is clearly the more important activity
)...
So I cut the small trap in half diagonally with a hacksaw, took 2 sides off of a new large trap, and grafted the cut trap onto opposite ends using stainless steel wire and nylon zip ties. The resulting "CrabCondo" has 6 doors and room for 2 loads of bait, it sits flat in moving water and holds lots of crab.
My goal was a low cost trap that would perform similar to a much higher cost larger trap/pot. Our best pull of it last summer, in August near the Coast Guard Station on the Siuslaw, we got 4 big keepers :dance: out of the 40 or so crab in it after perhaps a 30 minute soak...
as a side benefit, the 2 sides that I took off the big trap were put to use on one of our older box traps, replacing sides with lots of rust and wonky doors.
We use mostly the 24"x24" box traps that are very common, economical, and perform well. We also had one smaller (18" X 18") box trap that would not always lay flat on the bottom, light current could tilt it up, it would commonly come up totally empty in an area of good crab, clearly not working as a "trap". I tried adding some rebar to the bottom for weight but still had issues with it, plus it was really too small to leave for a long soak (while trolling for salmon, which is clearly the more important activity
)...So I cut the small trap in half diagonally with a hacksaw, took 2 sides off of a new large trap, and grafted the cut trap onto opposite ends using stainless steel wire and nylon zip ties. The resulting "CrabCondo" has 6 doors and room for 2 loads of bait, it sits flat in moving water and holds lots of crab.
My goal was a low cost trap that would perform similar to a much higher cost larger trap/pot. Our best pull of it last summer, in August near the Coast Guard Station on the Siuslaw, we got 4 big keepers :dance: out of the 40 or so crab in it after perhaps a 30 minute soak...
as a side benefit, the 2 sides that I took off the big trap were put to use on one of our older box traps, replacing sides with lots of rust and wonky doors.
