Haiku # 2,765
Cancer productus
Intellectual of crabs
And yet so macho
Got pinched again last week by a large red rock crab. The feeling can only be likened to having a car door slammed on your finger. The scream that emanates from my mouth when a rock crab gets me is the loudest un-amplified sound I have ever produced. And for those who have heard me sing or play the tuba that's saying something.
Now I finally know why he's screaming.
Reinventing the crab trap this week. I mean seriously. If you are a rock crab anywhere in the Bay Area you are in deep trouble. When I say "reinventing the crab trap" I am being inaccurate. I myself reinvented nothing. What I did was something I should've done long ago. I handed the project over to the Leonardo da Vinci of metal. Jerry Bonnafair.
Jerry Bonnafair in his Oakland Studio, with daughter Isabella and the Sabbatinni column wave machine we built for my puppet troupe several years ago. Note Jerry's hand made banjo leaning against the wall. In addition to playing and building banjos, Jare is a talented old time fiddler and a disciple of the great NC old tyme legend, Tommy Jerrell... oh why not... here's part of Les Blank's tribute, a beautiful little film in the opine of the MFN editorial machine.
Those of you who have read the print version of Monkeyface News #4 will remember Jerry as the unfortunate machinist/welder who gets to bring all my half-baked ideas to fruition. So several years ago when I was starting out in night smelting, having no idea what an A-frame net was, I went to Jerry and had him build what I thought would be the ultimate smelt killing device. The Lombard-Bonnafair Knuckle Breaker (AKA: The Blue Meanie). So Jerry built exactly what I asked for: a horifying 50 pound tool with a scissor hinge perfect for breaking knuckles, and an 8 inch spike on the bottom for piercing human feet (I mistakenly thought that an A-frame net would need to be anchored in the sand!). I caught a total of 6 smelt with this miserable device--and nearly crippled myself in the process.
The Bonnafair/Lombard knuckle-crusher, aka Blue Meanie
Again this is all explained in great detail in the print versions of the MFN. The ridiculous sand crab trap (Marilyn Death Hammer) I designed, the steel clam tube (AKA: Lumbago Death Tube) that still juts defiantly from the mud of HMB, like excaliber unsheathed! Not to mention the mudsucker trap otherwise known as the Lombard-Bonnafair Shin Wrecker! (They say the echoes of my screams are still heard in the Dumbarton salt ponds).
Not very good at capturing mudsuckers, but if you need to lose a little blood, this is your baby.
Anyway, where was I? The problem is, that for all his metalurgical skills Jerry Bonnafair is not really a clammer or a night smelter or a mudsucker fisherman. And so he just went ahead and followed my instructions (to a tee). Of course, I have no business designing anything made of metal when I am standing within 100 yards of someone of Jerry's genius.
Marilyn Death Hammer. A sand crab trap to end all sand crab traps. Breaker of human spines.
{For the full story behind all these misbegotten fishing tools, order your copy of MFN # 4 now!}
And so after my early failures in rock crabbing I ended up at Jerry's shop in Oakland. We were there because, well, frankly it's hard to find 3.25 inch rings. Rock crab traps must have escape rings. And those rings can be as small as 3.25 inches. Too many medium sized rockies were escaping from our dungy traps. So Jerry made a template to bend steel rod into perfect 3.25 inch rings. Then he set about welding cross bars and weights on all the doors of our modified dungy traps. Then we went out on the water again and discovered that even with weighted doors and 3.25 inch rings rock crabs tend to pull a Houdini when the bait is gone. So overnight soaks were useless. We tried Promars, Danielsons, Octagons and standard circular dungy pots. All with mixed results. Then Mikey saw some top entry stone crab pots online last month and so we started thinking along those lines. I contacted a few rock crab biologists who confirmed that top entry traps worked well for rock crabs down south (where there is actually a fairly large fishery for yellows and browns).
Stone crab trap
Discussed all this with Jerry and the next day he presented me with plans for a folding, totally portable, top entry rock crab trap. So I went out and bought a 100 foot roll of 12 gauge PVC coated mesh, and started making traps at Jerry's shop--following his template. Doing the math on it, including bait trays, cheap line (BTW, cheap cotton line sinks!) pool noodle buoys and zip ties, we can produce one total crabbing unit for 10 dollars.
Bam!
Jerry Bonnafair builds the template for a folding top-entry rock crab pot
Are they easy to make? No. Is it a lot of work? Yes. But I've got the time right now, and frankly the biggest issue with rock crabbing is lost gear. Obviously, these guys don't live on flat sandy bottoms like dungies. So it makes no sense whatsoever to fish with expensive gear that's gonna get humg up on rocks all day. And the amazing thing about Jerry's design is that we can easily fit 100+ of these folding gizmos on an 18 foot whaler.
Cutting wire, and sorting the pieces... Jan 2012
Anyway, got yet another tour in HMB today. Will post some cool footage of the crazy downtown SF herring spawn that lasted 4 days! Talked to monkeyface inside man Champion de la Banana yesterday (1/20/12) and he was still catching 'em.
Go Niners!
--Kirk-out
Too Funny, Kirk. I laugh out loud just thinking about this post. You are saving these devices for a fishing torture museum exhibit aren't you?
Posted by: Cap'n Chunk | 01/25/2012 at 06:23 PM
Damn - those old hillbillies don't give a fiddler's fuck about cleaning the rosin offa their pieces, do they? Nice wild rhodedendrons they posed that guy in front of.
Posted by: Finesmell | 01/30/2012 at 02:31 PM