Crabbing
Maple Valley Native Takes on Storms, Crabs and Reality TV
Danger is all in a day’s work for this Deadliest Catch captain
Johnathan Hillstrand was practically born with sea legs. The Maple Valley resident says his earliest memory is that of being on a boat with his father at age 3. He followed in his dad’s footsteps, becoming a crab fisherman right after high school, but never expected his work would make him famous. In 2005, when…
I Went Crabbing and Got Outplayed by All the Crabs
Spoiler alert: the trip was not a rousing success
My first mistake was forgetting to take the tag off my ring trap. I laid everything out at the end of the Shilshole Bay Marina pier—my rope still taped into a coil, my harness and caliper both still in the packaging, a pound of raw turkey legs, and my ring trap (a contraption made of…