Tanner Crabs in Juneau

 The Juneau Personal Use King Crab fishery only opens for a few days a year, if at all.  This year the winter season opened at the start of January, but I had just winterized the boat after deer season and thought that there would be a lot of snow to ski on and wouldn't have time to go after them.  It is finally set to close at the end of the weekend, the snow still hasn't come, and the winds have been calm the last couple days, so on Thurs I went to the Commercial fishery office and bought my annual sport fish license ($25) and the annual King Salmon Stamp ($10) and a personal use King Crab permit for the Juneau area (free).  Friday morning I left for work early, hooked up the boat, packed up Stout, and drove right past work out to Almalga Harbor to do some crab ringing in about 160 ft of water.  No King Crab, but I did land a few Tanner Crab, which are delicious! 
After work we met up with Sam and Christina for some dinner (thanks Sam for the delicious Halibut Simply Asia meal) preceded by some crab eating, followed by some of the Banff Film Festival movies down in Centennial Hall.

Stout looking for crabs

Keeper Tanner Crab

Sat
Hillary, Stout, and I went for a run up behind the house on the trails over to Douglas.  It was a nice trail run on frozen snow with an inch or two of new snow on top helping us not slip too much.  Afterwards, Hillary walked downtown and read at home, while Stout and I took the boat out in the channel to give the crabs another go.  We tried out by Sheep Creek and again ended up with no King Crab, but did land some nice Tanners.

Calm in the Channel

Mt. Juneau and downtown

Buddy!

One of the bigger Tanners from Sat

Stout guards his catch