Need Help, Crabs/Lobster, Sonar, Pods....

[Bruder Tac]

Hey Guys

I need help with the catching mechanics for lobsters and snow crabs.
Since the last patches, I don't understand it anymore...

How wide is the sonar scan from left to right?
How near must the pods be placed?
How long will lobsters and crabs travel to the pods?

I made a sonar scan of the sea area with the selfy and marked them on the map, than turned to the Atlantic Catcher, get back to the area. Send down 60 pods, on the spots, or 50m around, still sonar scanning for the right places.
15 pods were completely empty, but with a crab symbol on the sonar at the place, while pulling out.
15 pods had crabs, but all to small or female.
30 pods that crab, but the highest had 120kg of catchable crabs.
After pulling all 60 pods, I got only 2174 kg of crabs.

I don't expect 395 tons of crabs in that 60 pods, but only 2 tons are really not much. That's a bit frustrating....

[Zero]

Maybe this post has some info you can put to use to improve your catch.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1264250/discussions/0/2998794978539621936/

[Bruder Tac]

Sorry, this not really helpfull.
I still don't understand the 3 Questions.

[cbnnr]

It sounds like your dropping the pots too close together, i.e. dont autodrop. The only way I have found to do this is to walk one crew member between set up pots and resting and back again. Drop the pots at least 200 meters apart. Its better to have less pots with more crab.

Even so crabbing needs a little tuning in my opinion as from 30 pots I got about 6500 kg its not great financially but at least if I do it the develops get the data.

[Captain Crack Sparrow]

Originally posted by cbnnr:

It sounds like your dropping the pots too close together, i.e. dont autodrop. The only way I have found to do this is to walk one crew member between set up pots and resting and back again. Drop the pots at least 200 meters apart. Its better to have less pots with more crab.

Even so crabbing needs a little tuning in my opinion as from 30 pots I got about 6500 kg its not great financially but at least if I do it the develops get the data.

This might have been my problem. From my experience, and what your saying, I gather that setting them too close (right around the 100m border) causes a sort of exponential decrease in the amount you get per pot (So instead of one pot with 300Kg, you'll get 2 with 125Kg each sort of thing)? I have always had the low pop issue but I want to make sure I understand what your saying (With reference to the distancing) so I can go try and maybe get into crabbing again. Thanks in advance.

[Zero]

Originally posted by Bruder Tac:

Sorry, this not really helpfull.
I still don't understand the 3 Questions.

Hope this helps then...

Originally posted by Bruder Tac:

How wide is the sonar scan from left to right?
How near must the pods be placed?
How long will lobsters and crabs travel to the pods?

1. Depends what you have it set to...upper left corner of sonar. For more info check out the pinned discussion by the devs "How does sonar work?"
2. 100m from each other on their own lobster/crab icon on sonar seems to work best. 0/20 came back empty while testing.
3. 20hrs seems sweet spot for most fishing soak times

[KaptainKarl]

The best solution ive found is set the auto pilot and run the crane yourself. have someone baiting and setting. That way you can control how fast the pots go out. Also be sure to skip a few hours after setting about 20 pots. gives you time to sort without your gear going bad on long strings.

[Naut Enough]

hi there, just a lil info I've found myself from the testing i've done.. I play on beta version..

1.)sonar beam I don't believe is very wide at all and this fires down from the front of your boat so allow for your boats length when setting as well.. experimented with traveling 10m to side after marking crab/lobster on different paths and no longer marked it so this leads me to believe is only showing whats directly under the boat, and not showing much width at all to the sides. I tested this for a couple hours real life time in different positions and with different fish/shellfish and such.

2.)pots should be as close as absolute possible to where you mark the shellfish. they appear to have about a 100m radius fishing area for each pot, which is why if they're within 200m of one another you get reduced catchs as they're fighting each other for lobster/crab. so make sure to lay them beyond 200m apart (strings for lobster appear to need much more distance even though they currently have alot of other issues...)

3.)as for how long, if you mean time wise usually 18hrs to 20hrs is ideal after 20-21hrs your catch will begin decreasing per pot.

4.) Very important for crab and lobster to be in season. recent patches have greatly reduced catches when out of season. during season with arctic pioneer I can't make enough on lobster to pay the bills. but out of season its just atrocious...

hopefully that helps somewhat.

[BassinBuddy]

well tested the arctic pioneer on lobster, advanced to april 3rd, set 26 pots, waited 19 hours, picked them up, took catch to highest paying port, sold them, refueled boat, topped off bait, and ended up with 6 thousand profit. not great, but i was able to pay the bills, and that was with 4 crew members onboard.

[Naut Enough]

last trip out 6 strings of 20, 32,000 profit, 24,000 in fines, then 11,000 in fuel. so lost 3,000$ that trip. ah well lobster fishing is just for sport after all

[grolbu]

Maybe do a few trips doing your own sorting and rotate the rest of your crew around everything else (including cooking and repairing). I wouldn't swear it's right but it has seemed to me as though everyone on board gets better at everything no matter what they were actually doing, as long as they are doing *something* then they will get better at sorting. You'll get stuff sorted faster too ... I'd wait for the crew to retrieve a pot then set the autopilot to take you to just before the next pot, then go down to sort the lobsters that just came in while the ship takes you almost to the next pot. I'll try it out tonight if I can raise enough in a bank robbery to get the pioneer :)

Did you target lobsters or just chug along through fishy waters with the crew lobbing pots out as fast as they could ?

[Naut Enough]

thanks for checking on it as well grolbu. its interesting that your crew are training for positions that they aren't performing. this hasn't been the case in any of my games. only get better at cooking by cooking, sorting by sorting, etc. I was running full 6 crew, last few trips cut back to 3 to try to be able to actually cover my costs... my crew is actually very far in the training as well. over 60hrs gameplay rl time on this crew for example doing these positions. as for setting the strings of 20, 15 and 10, experimented alot with distances. currently setting 1,000m apart minimum, only set the string when multiple lobsters showing within a 100m window, set within 25m of lobsters appearing on sonar is what I'm currently doing. open to suggestions if anyone is seeing progress and results with the 20 pot strings or even the 15 or 10 input is appreciated.

[grolbu]

Looks like I was mistaken, it may have been different before but on the current beta my crew only train on what they are actually doing.

The bank robbery went well, my boys grabbed something like $30 million out of the vault and made a clean getaway, so I was able to purchase a 55 pot crab boat and a tip about where to find crab 3 days ago - conveniently close to where I found some 2 weeks ago, so I plotted a few rows up and down around there and set the autopilot to cruise at 10 kts, when the first crab appeared on the sonar the crew started tossing the pots out as fast as they were able until all were gone. Some landed near crabs, some near lobsters, some near fish, and some on empty seabed.

Then we waited for the first pot to go blue and I started hauling them in again - the guy on the crane is frankly lucky not to have been sacked yet, while the sorting was done by 2 crew about 20% good at it plus a noob. There were only 4-5 pots that came up empty, most had between 100 kg and 250 kg of crabs, so throwing them out randomly doesn't seem to have hurt. Ended up selling them for $66k less $1200 in fines, it wasn't the most profitable but given how much stolen dosh is buried under the tree in the back garden that wasn't really an issue any more and the whole thing was frankly quite relaxing. I'm not advocating bank robbery as a way of relieving stress, but I can't deny it worked.

One thing I noticed is that even the non-stop way I was doing it - as soon as the crane guy had the pot up onto the table I'd head for the next pot and be parked by it by the time the girls had finished sorting - after about 25 pots the pots were turning from blue to green before I could get to them, so next time I'll either set them out at 4 knots so the maturing is a lot more spaced out, or biff out about 25 then anchor for several hours before putting the rest out.

Tonight I'll give large scale lobstering a try !

[Huzaberg]

I tried laying 10string lobster pots today, some worked well, others would leave a buoy in the water that was unrecoverable

[Bruder Tac]

The Tipp with 200m Distance between the pots worked better, 5 tons out of 60 pots, instead of 2 Tons.