2019 Spot Shrimp Opener near Vashon Island

The 2019 Spot Shrimp season in Marine Area 11 was not expected to be as good as 2018, but we found great success near Vashon Island for hauling in these tasty critters.

The trip didn’t start too successfully though. We attempted to hit Colvos Passage on the west side of Vashon, thinking we would find more shrimp per boat/pot, knowing that the east side of Vashon is hit pretty hard. Instead, we struck out almost entirely, pulling all of our pots and only finding 2 shrimp total.

We put all of our gear back on the deck and motored north to go all the way around Vashon and hit the east side of Vashon, thinking, we can at least get a few around all the other pots.

We definitely found the fleet, the chaos of shrimping around a lot of other pots in close quarters, but we also found plenty of shrimp and we could have easily limited the five of us on the boat had we started off in that location.

During our short amount of time there, we saw everything from pots floating off into the main channel, to people dropping pots on top of each other.

We even had one of our pot buoy sticks get pulled underwater. I’m gonna guess that what happened was somebody’s pot got tangled with our pot anchor, which we always attach to the mainline about 10 ft from the pot itself.

Our pot didn’t move, as it had lots of shrimp in it, but the buoy stick was dragged underwater, with only our insurance buoy still above water. If your pot is moving, your shrimp aren’t staying in the pot, which is why we put the pot anchor on the mainline, to avoid what is happening on the surface translating to pot movement.

The picture above is exactly why the insurance buoy is worth it! There’s no way we find that pot with the buoy-stick a few feet underwater without the additional insurance buoy attached. You can read more about spot shrimp pot rigging here.

We got most of our shrimp in 270 – 330 ft of water and there was a nice cloud of shrimp in the area, hovering just above the bottom. When you show up to a new area with everyone’s pots already down, it’s not a bad idea to shrimp just a little deeper to steer clear of their stuff and still have a great shot at shrimp. Most pots were in the 250-275 depth line, so we stayed just outside that and had good success.

We probably averaged about 30 shrimp per pot once we got to the east side of Vashon, with our best pot about 50 shrimp. That’s not great shrimping if you have any experience in the Strait or the San Juan’s, but given that the average per boat during last years Marine Area 11 opener was 150, and this year was supposed to be worse (about half the shrimp in the test fishery compared to 2017/2018), we were quite happy.

We weren’t the only ones, quite a few boats around us were doing just as well, and several had limits from spending the majority of the day in these productive shrimping grounds.

We had our best pot pull after throwing a salmon carcass in the bottom of one of the faster fishing pots. I’ve heard other good reports from this bait approach. The yummy mixture of cat food, pellets, and mackerel draws them into the pot, acting as a broadcast bait and they tend to stick around more with a bait like a salmon carcass or halibut/ling carcass sitting in the pot.

I’m sure we will hear more about areas further north doing well also, as just like with crabbing, the further north you go, it generally gets better. I’m also waiting to hear about how Hood Canal did on the opener. I will post any updates in the comments on this post, also feel free to do the same if you’re reading this and have a report to share.

We will be headed to the next Hood Canal shrimping day on May 15th from 9am to 1pm and hope to have good success there during that limited 4 hour window.