Exploratory Crabbing 5/11/2012

Foursteps24 and I went down to Solomons Island in hopes of catching just a few crabs and in between soaking our traps and lines, we would fish for perch and croakers. We launched at 9:10 am and headed out to the western shore on the south side of the bridge. We crabbed and fished in 15 feet of water to 30 feet of water. Not a single crab to be found. I got a few nibbles on my fishing line tipped with bloodworms, but that was it. With nothing happening for my on the south side of the brige, I motored over to the northern side and crabbed in 21 to 33 feet of water with traps and fished in a cove in 45 to 80 feet of water. Not a single crab or fish. I headed back over the the eastern shore's cove near the restricted peir. There I got the skunk off barely by pulling up a crab on my fishing line. Yes I said a crab. A nice heavy six incher. I pulled him up out of 32 feet of water. I got excited and deployed my trotline. I let the line soak as I went to shore to put some gear into my truck in order to free up some room in my canoe with a trolling motor. Well, when I made it back to the trotline, I ran down it. Again, not a single crab, so I took Foursteps advice and called it a day. We were all back on shore by 2:30pm. It is funny that I caught a crab on my fishing gear, not with the crabbing gear. The lone crab that I got was a six inchers pont to point.

After today, I think that I will wait until june to start crabbing again. Oh yeah, I also lost one trap and on crab net.

[daddyg]

Im confused do I take my crab gear to the M&G tomorrow if I want to catch fish See you there

[moc]

Yeah, it was funny that I caught a crab with my rod and nothing with the crabbing gear. The people at the Solomons marina said that some trotliners start catching a bushel of crabs this week. The moved up river , how high, I do not know. I was shocked that I did not get any perch or croaker with bloodworms and shrimp.

[Southerly]

they've had crab pots set in the bay for at least a few weeks that i know of. in about 20' water. i think the general notion is they move up the rivers throughout the summer. i really don't know their habits that well myself but bluecrab.info has a lot of background knowledge. i usually just crab from a pier and i think i'm generally ok in june+ but have not kept records.

[Shady]

Thats funny that you only caught a crab on your fishing line, but not in the traps. When I first started crabbing from my kayak I actually fishing rod crabbed on purpose a few times by putting large chunks of white perch on big hooks in the Severn and caught a dozen one time. I will probably give it my first try the last weekend of May in the Severn. Last year the first time that I went was around 5/21 and I caught 8 just legal but super heavy ones.