Crab eaters pick their favorite species like sports fans pick their favorite teams – it all comes down to which made them fall in love first.

For 58-year-old Jim Copeland, that means Dungeness.

"I'm a native Californian; all I've had is Dungeness," says Copeland, a subcontract specialist for a Menlo Park defense contractor. "I've never even had king crab legs."

And when Copeland eats Dungeness, he doesn't sashay into some fancy seafood restaurant to place an order. Instead, every November during crab season, Copeland climbs aboard a sportfishing boat long before the horizon hints of orange and heads toward the Farallon Islands to catch his own.

"You know it's fresh because you pulled it out of the ocean yourself," Copeland says. "There's nothing better than fresh-cooked crab eaten warm with good French bread and a glass of wine – what a treat."

Gone crabbing

The air is tinged with pre-dawn cold. Dave Stephens, the deckhand aboard the C-Gull II out of Emeryville, checks fishing licenses and sets up fishing rods along the boat's rails.

The boat is for anglers who rent a spot on the daylong trip to the Farallons to try for the limit: 10 rock cod and six crabs. Many are seasoned fishermen in bright rubber waders. Others rent all the necessary equipment from the bait shop – the Emeryville Sportfishing Center – that boasts the requisite photos of grand catches as decoration.

Randy Le, 50, of Oakland, gets on a boat once a week during fishing season to catch halibut, rockfish, sand dabs and, except for this year because the season was canceled, salmon. And late in the season, there's Dungeness as a bonus.

"You just put it (crab) in hot water for 12 minutes," is the cooking tip provided by Le, who works room service at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. "I even like the crab butter. I eat it straight."

Copeland, of Woodside, is booked on three outings this month so that he'll have enough crab to serve as an appetizer on Thanksgiving, a family tradition.

After the crabs are pulled from pots set out on the sandy ocean floor, Copeland has his live crabs boiled dockside for $1 per crab. Then he wraps each in cellophane with a vacuum seal and stores it in the freezer. He refuses to serve crab from the grocery store, which he finds mushy. But in a pinch, he has been known to buy directly from fishermen in Half Moon Bay.

"You get fresh crab that's plucked from the ocean, and within six hours they're already cooking," says Don Wong, captain and owner of the C-Gull. "It doesn't get any better than that."

Crabbing through the years

Dungeness crab has been a San Francisco meal since the mid-1800s, when miners switched their fortunes from the mountains to the sea, says Rob DeBorde, author of "Fish on a First-Name Basis" (St. Martin's Press, $24.95, 214 pages), and a writer for Alton Brown's Food Network show, "Good Eats."

"The first time you have it, you remember because it's quite an experience," says DeBorde, who recalls his first Dungeness – the plate covered by a whole crab, which he picked apart leg by leg. The junior high-age student even saved the main shell until his mother forced him to throw it out a few days later.

Dungeness crabs are found from Mexico to Alaska, with much of the catch coming from the waters of Oregon and Washington. The name is from Dungeness, Wash., a fishing village northwest of Seattle, where the crab was first harvested commercially in 1848.

In California, crab season begins in early November for recreational crab fishermen, and mid- to late-November for commercial fishermen. The Central California region, which includes Bodega Bay, San Francisco and Half Moon Bay, opens two weeks earlier than the rest of the fisheries because of the historical importance of Dungeness in the area, says Pete Kalvass, a senior marine biologist for the state Department of Fish and Game.

It also means Bay Area crabbers can catch a good price during Thanksgiving, income lost last year when the season was pushed back after the Cosco Busan oil spill dumped more than 50,000 gallons of fuel into San Francisco Bay.

Call The Bee's Gina Kim, (916) 321-1228.