This is one of the many articles in the Mercury’s Holiday Issue 2026. Find a print copy here, subscribe to get a copy mailed to you here, and if you’re feeling generous and want to keep these types of articles coming, support us here.—eds.
We don’t have many holiday traditions on the West Coast, but we do have Dungeness crab. Oregon’s official state crustacean is kind of like our roast goose, struffoli, and Hoppin’ John all rolled into one—a festive regionalism anchoring holiday tables from Santa Cruz to Skagway. But frequently delayed commercial openings in Oregon—sometimes because crabs aren’t filled out with a commercially viable amount of meat, and sometimes because they contain high levels of domoic acid caused by harmful algae blooms potentially linked to warming oceans—mean buying local crab in markets often isn’t possible until after the new year. If your holiday table won’t be complete without a steaming tangle of vermillion crustaceans, consider catching them yourself. Crabbing from public docks is festive enough to count as its own tradition, and winter is a great time to do it. Here’s what to know before you bundle up and head to the coast.
Permits and Gear
Barring safety closures, recreational bay crabbing is open year-round in Oregon. You’ll need a pot, ring, or snare, as well as a crab gauge to measure the crabs and a bucket or cooler for storage. Before you drop your first pot, get a shellfish license (available online or at many gas stations and outdoor stores) and call the Oregon shellfish hotline (1-800-448-2474) to check for harmful algae bloom closures. Gloves can be nice for handling pinch-y crabs. The best bait is razor clams, Dungeness crabs’ favorite food (and a favorite of many human Oregonians). Otherwise, raw chicken or fish heads work.
Pots are big wire boxes. Bait goes in the middle, and the crabs can enter through one-way doors that trap them inside. Using them is a passive affair. Drop them off a dock, go eat clam chowder at the café down the road, and then head back to see what’s inside.
Rings lay flat on the sea floor with bait at their center. When you pull them up, the larger outer ring rises above the center, creating a basket shape that traps crabs inside. Pull rings every 10 or 15 minutes, and don’t be tentative; you’ve got to hoist steadily and firmly to keep that basket shape.
Snares are a bait box with a bunch of little coated wire loops on the outside. They don’t look at all like they should work, but they do. Attach the snare to a fishing pole, drop it where crabs are feeding, and then reel it in once they’re tangled in the loops (if the water is shallow and clear enough, you can actually see when this happens). Crabbing with snares is active and fun, plus you can cast snares farther out from a dock.
You can buy crabbing gear at places like West Marine or BiMart. Many coastal communities also have businesses that rent pots and rings, often pre-baited. Ask around at the visitor’s center or gas station, or just head for the pier and look for signs.
When and Where to Go
Dungeness love Oregon’s coastal bays, from the mouth of the Columbia all the way down to the Chetco River. Garibaldi, Newport, and Rockaway Beach all have public crabbing docks that are easy to get to from Portland and great places to start. You can also head to Kelly’s Marina in Nehalem, where you can crab from a floating dock, rent boats to drop pots in Nehalem Bay, and restock on dock provisions (i.e. beers and snacks). They’ll even cook your crabs for you.
Crabs are most active during slack tides, the time around the day’s high and low tides when the current is weakest and they can move around most easily to feed. If you’re using a pot, drop it 30 minutes before high or low tide, and pull it 30 minutes afterwards. For rings and snares, you’ll want to be actively crabbing through that entire window.
You can only keep male Dungeness crabs, which can be identified by their narrower abdominal apron (females’ are wider). Use your crab gauge to measure from directly in front of, but not including, the widest points on the crab. It must be at least 5.75 inches for recreational crabbers, and the limit is 12 male Dungeness per person, per day.
You might also bring up other crab species, including red rock crab (limit of 24 per person per day) and, increasingly, the aggressive, invasive European green crab (limit of 35 per person per day). Red rock crabs do not have size or sex limits and are delicious, although if they’re too small, they’re not worth the trouble—most of their meat is in their claws.
Cooking Crab
It is most humane to quickly kill the crab before you boil it. Do this by chopping it in half lengthwise, head to tail, with a cleaver. The downside to this technique is you lose the crab butter, which many people like to eat. If that’s you, Oregon State University has a “recommended crab euthanasia protocol” identifying two specific points on the underside of the crab that, when spiked, destroy all the animal’s nerve centers. Know that the butter is where domoic acid, a frequent toxin in our area, accumulates. If you do decide to eat the crab butter, make doubly sure there’s not a current closure.
Add your crab to boiling liquid—this can be water, beer, wine, stock, or a combination. Once it returns to a boil, cook for 15 minutes, until it turns bright red and is cooked through (bump this up to 20 if you have more than two crabs, or are cooking a very large crab—lucky you).When it’s done, take off the top of the shell (if you haven’t already) and remove the gills just beneath, which look like a bunch of spongy feathers. After that, what happens next is between you and your holiday traditions. Mayo, or melted butter? Crack everything first, or crack as you go? Crab cakes, crab omelets, crab fried rice, crab garlic noodles? It’s all on the table.