Pacific Spot Prawn

Deep, structured bottom (200–700 ft) over steep shelves, rocky drop-offs, and gravelly ledges; read your chart for structure, not flat mud. They're light-sensitive: shallower at dawn or under heavy cloud, dropping to darker pastures by midday. Run out from Newport, Garibaldi, or Depoe Bay on a calm-ocean day.

Freshness is the whole game, because a head enzyme softens the tail within minutes of death. A prime prawn is firm, translucent, and heavy: shell intact, head still bright; limp tails or blackened, mushy heads mean it sat too long. Size grades up (the big females are prized), but a small firm prawn beats a big soft one. Twist the heads off your keepers on deck and ice them immediately; done within minutes, they're sweet, snappy, and sashimi-grade the day you land them.

Heavy wire-mesh prawn pots (25–30 lb, small tapered funnels) on leaded ground line (never floating poly, which is a prop hazard) with line at least 25% longer than the depth for scope. An electric puller (Ace, Scotty) saves your back over 400+ ft; rig big, hard-pulling buoys. Bait a perforated cage with a 'soup' of oily cat food, tuna, or crushed sardines, plus pellets soaked in prawn oil to keep the scent trail alive on a long soak.

Bigger than coonstripe or pink shrimp, with white spots on the first and fifth abdominal segments and white stripes on the carapace. If it's the big one, it's the spot prawn.

An ODFW recreational shellfish license (age 12+) is all you need: no separate ocean endorsement for shellfish.

20 lb of shrimp in the shell, per person, per day. Open year-round, 24 hours, in the ocean, unless ODA has the coast closed. Ocean only: there are no spot prawns in Oregon's bays or estuaries. Don't land prawns caught north of 46°15′N (the OR/WA line) without a Washington commercial permit.

An enzyme in the head turns the tail to mush within minutes of death. On deck, drop the catch straight into cold seawater; before you run back, pinch the heads off your keepers, rinse the tails, and pack them on ice. Then eat them barely cooked: raw as sashimi the day you land them, or a quick sauté in butter and garlic.