In my search for crab pots that are small enough to be fishable in my 16′ Willie Driftboat, but big enough to catch some serious crab, I came across the Willapa 360 degree Spring Door Crab Trap / Crab Pot. It didn’t take much looking to know that these were going to be serious crab catching machines. They have all of the advantages of a slip ring crab pot without the liability of the slip ring.. In other words, crab can crawl in directly from any side of the trap. There are no side walls what-so-ever. instead, the sides of the pots are one giant door that goes all the way around the whole pot (see cutaway picture)
A great Crab Catcher
As you can see by the picture to the right, the pot is equipped with an upper and lower angled spring steel door. The crab simply crawls through, but can’t get out. Crabs check-in, but they can’t check-out.
I did multiple side-by-side live field comparisons to the much less expensive Danielsons 24″ Square Collapsible Crab traps and in each case, the 360 degree access yielded better catch rates. In every test, the 360 degree traps had 1 to 2 keeper crabs more in it than the Danielsons. that adds up quickly when you are fishing bays that a lot of crabbing pressure. The most recent test, we compared 3 of each trap over one high tide (3 hour soak) in Nehalem Bay (Oregon). The 360 degree traps caught 18 keepers to 12 keepers in the Danielsons traps.
As rigged for shallow water (no additional weight)
The Danielsons Crab traps are still great traps for the price and definitely worth considering if you have a tight budget. The one thing I liked about them is that they are very durable and will last a long time. I’m going to do more testing and reviews of other crab pots, but they might be the #2 small boat crab pot when it is all done. They definitely can catch crab. We’ll see after my next round of testing. After fishing the Danielson pots several times, I made some important modifications. I used bailing wire to tie down 2 sections of 1 inch rebar as additional weight in all of my crab pots to keep them from drifting/sliding during heavy tides and on the danielsons pots, I added several ounces of lead to the doors to keep the currents from blowing the doors open. This has significantly increased the catch rate. The modified door is shown below. It should be noted that Danielsons offers per-weighted door that you can buy as an accessory for the trap. Overall, I would give the Danielsons pots score of 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. Good pots but need improvement.
An inexpensive modification results in better catch rates.