Fished 'em. Built 'em (half-round and square). Treated 'em for worms. I'd knit heads. At the start of every season, I emptied the shore of every rock that I could lift. I worried about 'em with every bit of weather.
Thought that I'd died and gone to heaven after pulling my first string of wire traps. And my, didn't they hold the bottom in damned near any weather!
The only problem that I ever had with wire was some I had in aluminized wire - no vinyl. That wire had some silicon in it and they got to disappearing during season two (didn't winter very well either). Vinyl lasts until that annual gear loss gets 'em.
Same here, built thousands of them, knit the heads every evening after building all day, used to steam bend the hoops and used a 55gal drum for the form(offshore gear), bought lath & frames for square gear from a outfit in Conn. then got some from North Country Wood Products in Maine. When first setting out we'd go around and get all the broken up concrete rubble to put in the traps to sink them before the oak soaked up. Dipped the
traps in gas tar to keep the worms out, that was before that pot dip came out, cut the pot dip with diesel then floated the stuff on water to keep the level up when you rolled the traps over in it. Some guys ended up with purple welts on the skin where the pot dip splashed on them, that was some bad stuff.
When we first got some wire gear we thought it sucked, the traps just loaded up with crabs but nobody told us about vents!!
Yup they do stay put in the blows, we fished 20 trap trawls and only problem we had was the ends would blow around a bit but the gear stayed put.
Picture from the old days at the tar pot
Here's what i'm building these days, check out the rest of my gear at alaskashrimppots.com
I'm hauling in just over 100 fathoms here
