Feeling crabby, in the good sense of that term

The sorry truth of the matter: the Man of Constant Leisure hasn't gotten much fishing done lately.

There was a half hearted effort in frigid Minneapolis last week. I punched a hole in the Mississippi River ice and offered up a few fatheads. The disinterest from the local fish community was appalling.

When I got back to San Francisco, I heard that the Municipal Pier, which was closed because of the Cosco Busan fuel spill a month ago, had re-opened. Today I decided to check out the scene.

An old Chinese guy was working the ocean side with a fishing pole and didn't appear to be having any success. At the end of the pier, however, three Filipino dudes seemed to be having luck with the crabs. Other than that, the pier was oddly depopulated. I enjoyed the extra elbow room as I commenced crabbing.

For bait, I used the entrails from a tasty organic chicken I cooked for J last night. I will say, immodestly, the dinner was quite delicious. As you can see, the crabs of San Francisco Bay enjoy organic chicken, too.

I didn't catch anything of consequence but there was some fast action. A few times I pulled up my hoop net to find six or seven crabs crawling inside, looking as baffled as a crustacean can. I also managed to land some red rock crabs (like the sad fellow posing in front of Russian Hill) with the snare, which I was casting with the old catfish pole Charles gave me.

I thought about keeping a few of the bigger specimens for dinner. Then I talked to a Parks Service game warden who was trolling for violators. He told me he'd watched some women crabbing at Fort Mason and could see that the crabs still had fuel on them--this, he noted, in spite of Officialdom's position that Bay crabs are entirely safe to eat.

After that, I concluded this was a strictly catch and release operation. Still, it was fun, as you can see from my smiling mug (and, yeah, that's Alcatraz in the background).