A Single Southern Guy in America

December 10, 2004

Catching Crabs

(Ed. Note- We get mail. The following post originally appeared as a comment by Mike in this post. I thought it was so good I asked Mike if he'd mind if I used it as a post in it's own right. He agreed and here it is. Thanks for the good advice Mike!)

I lived in Baltimore as a young child (we moved back to New York where I was born when I was five), and have made a few trips to visit family, normally meeting in Ocean City, Maryland, over the years. Crabbing is big there, since there's nothing like a Maryland steam crab or crab cake.

The Chicken on a hook, or tied to a string method works but takes practice and skill. Crabs may be dumb but when the meal they're eating starts puling them right out of the water it doesn't take much of a brain to know something�s up. I tried this method once, and although I didn't catch any crabs, I got some advice: First is to try to keep your line as vertical as possible, so when you start to pull, the bait goes up through the water rather than drag along the bottom. Second, put your net in the water when you drop your bait. When they say sit back and drink a beer they mean put down the line holding the bait to drink with and keep your net submerged. If you have your net sitting on the dock and you start pulling a crab, it's going to bolt as soon as you put that net in the water because of the disturbance.

Traps are good but not always. The way they work (for folks new to crabbing) is that you drop this contraption that is essentially a cage with bait (chicken) in the center. When it reaches the floor it unfolds flat, and you just wait awhile and when you want to check the trap you pull it out of the water. When you pull it the sides fold up and trap the crab in the cage, but you have to be fast. Most of the time you can't see the trap at the bottom so your tactic is to leave it there for about the length of time it takes to drink a beer and yank it up. If you can see the bottom than a mistake most people make is to watch the crab climb into the trap and try to pull it up right then. That's not a good idea since the crab is still cautious and ready to take off at the slightest warning. Let it get comfortable and start munching on the bait before pulling it up. You have plenty of time and the only thing that might happen in the meantime is wither more crabs will join him or a bigger crab will come along and chase the other off.

These methods are fine when you're by yourself, but when you're sharing a dock with a bunch of people the commotion of all those traps and nets tend to chase the crabs, and everything else, off. So try to find a secluded spot.
Also, ask the locals if the crabbing is good. They tend to come in "Runs".
Usually the best time to catch crabs is just around high tide, they come in from th ocean and start looking for stuff to eat. When the tide starts going back out they'll congregate closer to shore (like under docks) to try to stay out of the current. That's the best time to catch them before they get pulled back out to sea.

Once in Ocean City, Md. a bunch of us went to various boat docks using string with bait, traps, without much luck. Crowded and frustrating. We found ourselves at the Western bulkhead just inside the inlet to Chesapeake Bay. The tide was high, and as some of us theorized, all the powerboats and yachts going through the channel were pushing the crabs against the bulkhead (some folks who were at the sandbar directly across from us said the place was crawling with them also. We tried the previous methods without much luck at all. After about an hour we noticed that about 20 feet away a twelve-year old girl and her Dad had a five gallon bucket 3/4 full of crabs. It turns out the girl noticed some clinging to the bulkhead and just started scraping them off with the net. We started reaching down with our nets as far as we can, then come up quick against the bulkhead and snag up to four crabs at a time. We wound up with eight bushels of crabs that day, and three years later I tried the same thing and it was totally dry.

Welps, that�s all I know about crabbing.

(Ed. Note- If you liked this, you might also check out Acidman's crabbing talk from last summer.

Posted by Adam H at December 10, 2004 06:12 PM ~ Link Cosmos | Trackbacks (0)

Comments

Glad to see the weblog is back :)

Posted by: teedz at December 13, 2004 01:43 PM

Are you going to tell us about Georgia???

Posted by: mandy at December 13, 2004 02:04 PM

Crabs... Yumm.... I was invited to a friend's crabfest party couple weeks ago. Her husband fished for these crustaceans off the the coast in San Francisco. Once a year they will have a crabfest to clean out the freezer. There was a HUGE cooler full with blue crabs. The meat was so sweet and tasty. I went wild! Fresh crabs are the best! I wish I live near a place that I can catch these easily locally.

Posted by: Karmalia at December 24, 2004 02:25 AM