Diving for King Crab

Chad Hood talks about what he loves to do in the winter. One of my favorite things to do in the wintertime, if I could, would be go out and do these night dives out of Juneau and I go, you know, it’s pitch dark out and I'd go out and I have a flashlight. And then a gal in town made these dive bags that were specifically made to put crab in it. I always go from the shore, never a boat. One thing about night diving is you got to leave a light along the shore because you don't know which direction it is when it's pitch blackout. Of course, I'd always had to go by myself because no one else ever wanted to do it, or I didn't trust going out with anybody else. But put a little light on the shore, so I knew where to go back to and then I go down. You’re just kind of be swimming along the shelf about 35 to 40 feet with your dive light. And boy, when you would come across a big male king crab. It's massive. I mean, it's big on its own, but underwater it just has this sort of sea monster sort of look. But the trick about it is I got one hand to use the dive light and then I got the other hand to hold the crab bag. And so I needed a third hand to actually stuff the dang crab into the bag. And so it was always a little bit of a wrangle to be able to see and to get that thing in the bag when I'd actually catch one. But boy, I'll tell you what, there's nothing better than fresh king crab, and I do the dry theater or wet food. She has a good friend of mine, and I think he's sane.