Lilliwaup Spot Shrimp Haul

We cruised across Puget Sound headed towards Hood Canal’s Spot Shrimp!

My favorite four hour fishery opened on Saturday: Hood Canal Spot Shrimp! Hoodsport to Lilliwaup area was our choice for day one. A friend of a friend opened up their beach house near Lilliwaup and we cruised from Edmonds to Lilliwaup in my little Boston Whaler.

The journey up the Puget Sound and down the Hood Canal was amazing. It is to date the longest journey I’ve made in that little boat at about 104 nautical miles round trip. The water was flat calm and the sun was a shining. We made it to the cabin in the evening. Met everyone. Got to talking about shrimping a little around the fire pit. Went to bed excited for the coming morning.

Calm morning on Hood Canal for the Spot Shrimp opener

The morning mood was anything but hectic. We casually rowed out to my boat at around 8:30 am, which was tied off to a mooring buoy in front of the cabin. Having the boat in the water the night before was a big bonus. Ran a little south of Lilliwaup towards Hoodsport and idled around getting the pots baited. This time my bait was a mixture of shrimp bait pellets, canned tuna in oil and canned Friskies Ocean Fish & Tuna cat food. It was the consistency of wet cement and smelled about as good as you could imagine. Barf!

Spot Shrimp weren’t that deep this year

We dropped our four pots in the 250′ to 325′ and gave it about an hour before the first pull. The first two pots had 40 and 50 Spot Shrimp in them. Then next two had next to nothing! We reset and waited another hour. By the time we had our second set of pulls in we were just over two of the four limits we needed. Only enough time to set and pull them one more time! We set them on the shallow side in 220′ to 250′ and our luck turned around a little. Our third and final set of pulls we captured another 160 shrimp.

Pots went in at 9 am and were out just before 1 pm. Four limits for four guys but we had to work for them!

Tasty Hood Canal Spot Shrimp

I think this was the first shrimping trip to Hood Canal that we barely limited. We have always had the good fortune of getting our limit easily in Hood Canal. I think it was a depth issue. Too deep for most of the morning. We had ourselves more than enough Spot Shrimp to feast on around the fire pit. Plus there were lots of extras to split up with the group and take home. A fun time shrimping on Hood Canal!