Mission to pickup a pod/kerbal from Bop and bring it back

[arkive]

I'm kind of at my wits end here.  I have a mission that I'm supposed to pickup an MK1 pod and kerbal off Bop.  I can get to Bop and then get down to the surface with a probe take control of the kerbal and put him in the pod, but I can't for the life of me get the claw to grab the pod.  I've tried barely hitting it to as fast as 3 m/s and it will not latch on.  I've tried resetting the claw after it accidentally made contact with the ground in case that messed it up and no dice.  I have no idea why it won't grab but it doesn't help that this pod is on the permanently dark side of Bop.  Even with lights it's difficult to get bearings at any reasonable altitude.  In positive news my precision landing abilities have gone through the roof.
 

Thoughts, suggestions?  Is there a better/alternate tool than the Advanced Grabbing Unit for this job?  As an aside the probe has a docking port and the plan is to rendezvous with the main ship in orbit and dock the probe/pod inside an MK3 cargo bay and bring the whole thing back that way.

[bewing]

Without mods, the klaw is the only possible tool for the job. Picking things up off the ground is just really hard.

The main thing to understand about grabbing with the klaw is that at the moment you touch your target, the klaw has to be nearly perpendicular to the surface that it's grabbing. Unlike some other players here, I find that your speed makes no difference whatsoever. Fortunately, you are doing this on a very low-G body. I'd say, land right next to your target, look it over closely, find the most horizontal surface on it (probably the top?) and see which direction it's tilted -- so you know which direction you have to tilt your probe while you are coming down on top of it, pre-orient your probe, and then take it really slow. You may want to use the kerbal to push the pod downhill (or maybe uphill?) to someplace where it is as level as possible.