Danielson 24" Fold-Up Pacific Coast Crab Trap | Vinyl-Coated Steel Wire, Foldable, Easy Storage & Transport | 4 Entrance Doors & 2 Escape Rings | Blue

I recently bought several of these because I have a smaller sized boat and needed to conserve space. These are good quality and fold up flat nicely. I stack 9 of them up against the wall of my boat and bungee cord them to keep them in place. Light weight, sturdy, quick to use, and more importantly... they caught me some crabs yesterday. Used in Oregon state and fish and wildlife officer checked them when I was coming in and confirmed they were good. Not sure about other states but I'm all set with these here in Oregon.

This Danielson FTC Fold-up Crab Trap is 24-inches square and made of coated thick gage wire. The corners of the side panels latch with loops of wire to the top and bottom. The top, sides and bottom are made of heavy metal plastic coated and are quality made to last. My trap did not come with a bait cage, so I will use a piece of stainless steel wire to thread bait on to and make it latch closed. I applied some hog rings where necessary. It has two escape rings for small crabs with one being designed for Crab removal. It has a fall-away rot-cord system to disable the trap should it not be retrievable, and this can be made more effective with one stainless steel hog ring. This coated trap will last for years and provide many crabs for the pot. I am just a recreational crabber and will only have a few traps and this one will last. For about $20 it is a good bargain delivered by Amazon Prime for free. Constructed of vinyl-coated steel wire. This trap measures 24-inches L x 24-inches W x 13-inches H and it folds flat for transport and storage, if you want to disassemble it down to shipping size. It has four entrance doors, which are 9.5" x 4.5", that close after the crab enters. When I received the trap, the plastic split cylinder hinges were not placed so the door would remain centered. The cylinders of split plastic were placed on the wires so the doors would slide to one side and leave an opening for escape. About 5 minutes of removing and replacing the split cylinders, solved this problem. This is an issue for Danielson's quality control of assembly to address, if they want their products to be better received by the buying customer. I still plan to buy a couple more of these Danielson crab traps as they seem to be the best I've found, for the price paid, $21.77, delivered from Amazon Prime. Since purchasing this trap and one of the Danielson Pacific Crab trap, I feel the Pacific is the better deal, basically the same trap with a glow bait cage and the top has a hinged opening for removal and baiting, also the doors are Glow coated also. Best deal and a better looking trap.

Once I figured out where to set the trap and how to bait it, this trap worked great and was made from vinyl coated wire mesh. I did have to buy a separate bait cage from Amazon (not sure why it doesn't come with one - otherwise the trapped crabs eat up all your bait in a short time.) I took off one star for that. I bought a buoy and line at a local fishing store - caught a bucket of pinfish off the beach (you can use chicken necks and gizzards in lieu of fish) and loaded the separately purchased bait cage with the fish. Only a couple of small crabs the first few days so I kept moving the trap around until I found a hot spot and the right depth (~6 feet at mid-tide in this case.) I did put my name and information on a piece of paper and laminated it in plastic and zip tied it to the trap so nobody would "accidently" pick up my trap. I have attached a photo of my first three "keepers" in my boat's bait well. Crab salad tonight!

We own six of these Danielson folding crab traps. They are a fraction of the cost of the big steel traps and they can be hauled up by hand (as opposed to some of the aforementioned steel traps). We only crab in the bays here in Oregon so we don't need the extra build of the more expensive traps. And, as far as function, just look at the photo! That's the result from a 30 minute drop. Four limits in about three hours. These traps WORK!

It works, but there are four big problems with this product. 1 - no bait cage, you have to buy it separately. 2 - no rope, floater, etc... gotta buy those separately too and attach it to each corner of the cage somehow. Note, do not attach a single rope to the center of the cage because it will bend the metal over time! Tie something to all four corners to cage to spread the force out evenly. 3 - cage is not heavy enough, so it must be weighed down with something or else it will flip in the waves. 4 - most importantly, the doors are held to the cage with very very weak cheap plastic hinges that will break when pushed backwards or to the side. One door fell off completely the first time I used it. I would strongly recommend investing in 8 zip ties to secure the hinges before you use it. In summary, this product is in no way ready to use straight out of the box, you have to put alot of work into it first.

Not recommended for blue crab fishing. Used it for 4 days and the crabs would get in but would escape. The gaps between the connecting panels are too large.

2022 update: California changed the rules. So this trap is no longer legal as is. (Gov't must have ownership of these trap manufacturers.) New rules dictate a 5" opening with rotten cotton. These are not. But if you clip the hooks off of one side and secure it with a single piece of legal cotton - then that whole side will open which meets the 5" diameter requirements. Original report: Took this out of bodega bay on the opening day of the Dungeness crab season. We had 5 cages. Some with weighted doors, some without. Just the bare cage with a bait container in the middle worked flawless. 1. set up the rope to pull from the center 2. use bait containers with the smallest holes (bags worked best - like fishnet stocking size) 3. the leaded rope works great 4. get a float that doesn't look like everyone else's. The spent helium containers were the most entertaining on the water. 5. flags on the floats helped. pretty amazing trap.

I needed a new trap and didn't want the crabs to escape. This is not really big, but a really good size. It was kinda heavy, but it means that it's well built and will last for a long time. I've also left this outside for a couple of months and I have to say it hasn't rusted so it's well made. I would like to purchase another one, but the areas were I've gone crabbing hasn't been lucky. I do advise this is better than the round ones. Just bring your phone with a back up battery to watch videos while you wait since you won't have to work as hard as the round two ring crab bait.

I haven't used this crab pot yet but it looks like it is good quality and will last for many years.

Great Piece of Kit!

Product arrived in less than 2 days and took about 2 minutes to assemble. I reinforce the back and sides with zip ties just because I will be using everyday all summer. Left the trap out for about 12 hours. Almost sunk my kayak it had 22 crabs inside. Half were undersized but I was expecting 2 or 3 lol.

It looks great , but was too big to travel with. Have returned it and hope i get all my money back. I bought it with the rope and floaty thing and bait trap. When I wanted to return items I got one return slip. The post office said I needed 2. I just made two copies and hope that's gonna work to get full refund.. Other than being too big to travel with it was great looking crab trap equipment! :)

It is easy to assemble/fold, but I wish it was more compact once folder. The top and bottom faces are 24x24, but the trap folds into a flat pancake with an inconvenient area of 30x24, so make sure it fits your storage. I assumed there was a way to fold it smaller, but I'd have to mod it to do so. To fold: Two of the four lateral faces are smaller and fall down flat onto the bottom face inside the cage. The other (4) faces hold together and collapse the way you'd flatten a cardboard box. I was hoping that faces could be detached completely, but they don't. You will need to use a bungee cord, or coil the crab line around the trap in order to have it remain truly flat -- it naturally wants to spring back open slightly. The contents are easy to access. Two of the sides swivel open, like the flap of a mailbox, giving you an opening that is 24x13 into the cage. The cage will still retain its shape with one flap up (so it doesn't collapse on your catch, unlike other accordion type cages). One other comment mentions the sides might be difficult to open over time when rust accumulates. I can neither confirm nor deny that (yet), but having an opening at the top would probably rust equally just as much. There is a ring on the top face that is pre-attached with an escape cord, aka rot cord. That's a nice feature, in case you lose your trap, but the escape area is very minimal. On the top face there is a second ring, but that one is welded on there. It is optional, but you can make the trap more responsible by freeing that ring (with a small hacksaw), and re-attaching it with rot-cord. This will double the potential escape area. The door hinges move freely and well. But the doors don't always return to their original closed position. The bottom of the doors can catch onto the bottom grid, leaving a partly closed door. Adding a 1-2oz pinch lead weight to the doors helps with that and is a trick to help doors stay closed in the face of tidal/underwater currents. Another option is to trim a few mm off the bottom door stems so it doesn't catch on the bottom.