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Spot Shrimp pot rigging and enjoying your catch
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Feb 5, 2025
How to rig your shrimp pots for catching spot shrimp in Puget Sound. After getting shrimp on board your boat, how to handle them for maximum enjoyment of these tasty critters. We show some pot rigging before the trip as well as the shrimp pot rigs in action on trips to Vashon Island and Hood Canal this year.
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welcome to another video edition of
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Pacific Northwest best life you can
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always go to pnw best life calm for
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everything you need to know to
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experience the great outdoor recreation
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of the Pacific Northwest today we're
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talking about rigging and dropping
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shrimp pots we'll also talk about how to
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store and process your shrimp
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we've been out shrimping near Vashon
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Island and Hood Canal this season and
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we've done ok there's just nothing like
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pulling up a pot full of shrimp though
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and we're gonna try to help you get
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rigged up for that one of the most
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important parts about rigging your
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shrimp pots is having adequate weight
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you look at the popular bow mac SMI a
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square pot here there are only about 10
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pounds unweighted and so you can see
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I've added some some home gym weight I
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never really used anyways and I'm
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secured them with parachute cord to be
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unbalanced end of the pot to get it to
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about 30 pounds the other really
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important aspect of shrimp pot rigging
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is how modular the system is what you
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see here is a quick link attached to a
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see link and that sea link is connected
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to another ceiling on the main line this
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allows the system to come apart very
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easily very quickly and that's important
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because when you have a lot of shrimp
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gear on the boat and you're pulling pots
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and dropping pots there's a lot going on
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and the more you can break it up and
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manage it the better off you're gonna be
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now we're going to talk about kind of
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putting it all together with this
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popular style trim pot here on Puget
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Sound you bait drop it in we also hang
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it from the inside to get the inside
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you've got this additional chamber here
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to put it here put a hanging date over
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here I can keep it simple and just drop
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the canister
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right in and ready to go and secure that
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again with this one I have a quick link
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to a ceiling I've got my 400 feet of
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rope yeah as it's going over just gonna
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see Lenny come together real quick and
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I'm gonna drop that I'm gonna let 10
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feet a line out and then you throw my
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anchor pot anchor on and the rest of the
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system is all interchangeable the rest
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of its all the exact same on the on the
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fast fishing pots as well now on the
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other end of the main line I've got
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another see link connected to the long
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line snaps that are on this buoy stick
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and that's the primary floatation for
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for the pots and then we also have an
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additional insurance buoy which we'll
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talk about here in a minute that we
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additionally attached to the floatation
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system but let's see dropping dropping
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pots in action here on our trip in Hood
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Canal
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so we've already attached the pot the
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mainline and dropped it over
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now we've attached to the pot anchor
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that's a tough doubt over up to about 10
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feet and drop the pot all the way down
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there you go
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yes how does an accident no accidents on
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this boat I felt like he's going one of
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the rules of dropping your shrimp pots
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and getting all the gear overboard is
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thou shalt not hit each other with with
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the buoys but we clearly broke that rule
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there on our hood canal trip what you
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see here is the insurance buoy which
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we're going to talk about next and how
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that's important I'm going to attach one
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more bit of floatation and why I do it
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in two parts is I don't want so much
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floatation that again I'm lifting my pot
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off of the bottom based on the activity
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on the top but I've got another got
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another piece of floatation here as
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insurance let's say for some reason this
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pot decides to walk down into deeper
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water now my buoy here is submerged and
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this might be the only thing above water
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that's allowing me to find it and
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hopefully retrieve my very expensive pot
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that's hopefully got shrimp in it okay
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so we've had a full day of shrimping
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around Vashon Island on the six-hour
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opener on May 11th and we're looking for
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our last pot of the day it's almost one
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o'clock it's almost time to have all the
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pots out of the water and we can't find
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our buoy stick all we can find is this
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yellow buoy sticking up out of the water
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and some people next to it pulling their
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pots we don't know exactly how it
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happened all we know is our buoy stick I
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got pulled underwater the top buoy got
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separated from the stick and the only
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thing showing was this insurance buoy
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still attached to everything as you can
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see here you could see the rest of it is
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underwater we never would have found
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that buoy stay
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without the extra insurance Bui really a
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lifesaver both in getting our gear up
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getting our pot up which actually had
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plenty of shrimp in it still but not
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losing the 200 dollar investment in pot
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and pot rigging had we not been able to
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find it which would have been a real
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real nightmare a real disaster so again
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the insurance Bui definitely an
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important part of the shrimp pot rigging
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system that saved us on an opening day
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okay so now you've been able to retrieve
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your pots you've got a bunch of yummy
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tasty spot shrimp on board how do you
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want to handle these care from
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definitely want to keep them on ice keep
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them cool and here's one of the ways you
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can you can enjoy these these awesome
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tasty critters here which is which is
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eaten raw right there on the boat is how
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shrimping is done so
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you gotta do you gonna do a little
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twisty twisty of the head yeah yeah we
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got a whole lot of the heads there you
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go get the head off you put the heads
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back in the thing now this thing you can
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shell it you get the shell off and then
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just if you want to take them home and
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storm for later use there's basically
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two strategies you can use to keep them
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good one is to process them on your way
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back to the marina keep the heads the
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WDFW wants you to keep hold onto those
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and so you get back to the launch and
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keep the tails and suffer containers for
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each license shrimp fisherman or you
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could keep them alive in ziplock bags
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storm on ice all the way up until you're
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gonna cook them and that you would only
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do it that way if you wanted to fry up
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the heads and suck out the awesomeness
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that is the the shrimp head if you if
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you process them take the heads off
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earlier the heads will quickly degrade
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as there's an enzyme that's released as
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soon as they're killed and you only have
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a short window of time to do anything
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with them before the any of the meat or
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anything will be ruined so you want to
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handle it you know in a particular way
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if you plan to suck out the heads got to
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keep them alive up until no cooking time
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alright that's it for for today's shrimp
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pot rigging and processing video here if
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you enjoyed this please give us a like
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for more good videos on how to enjoy the
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incredible outdoor recreation of the
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