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I decided to crab closer to home. Since my last early crabbing mission to Solomon's Island was less than spectacular, I had the itch to still give it one more try. I met SurfDog, Shield and his friend, Mike, who was new to kayak fishing. John arrived first, then me. We launched around 7:30am. Low tide was around 11 am. Shield (Don) and Mike met up with us closer to 9:00am. My main focus was going to be to crab with a 600 foot trot line. Everyone else was trying to catch fish. The weather was beautiful. Temperatures would reach up to 75 degrees under sunny skies.
The first thing that I noticed was that the commercial crabbers had trot lines deployed almost at every shoreline and channel, not leaving me many options. I used my canoe today, not my kayak for this test run in locating crabs. I deployed my line near to one of my spots that was barely available. I left my line of chicken necks soak for 5 minutes and then I ran down my line. To my surprise I caught 5 crabs in the 5.5 inch to just over six inches on the first run! The crabs have arrived I told myself! Well, I did very little fishing since I was catching crabs. It was hard to do both. I ended up with 31 crabs, and called it quits by 12:30 pm. I caught two to four crabs per run down the line. All were large males. I only saw one female. For every crab that I caught, I lost one. The crabs would jump off early before I could get to them since I began to crab when the sun was getting high in the sky as opposed to early morning daylight.
I believe SurfDog ended catching two small croakers on bloodworms, and Mike caught a small rockfish.
It was not a stellar crab run for me, but the crabs seem to be moving in now. I spoke to another crabber, and they told me the crabbing was dead yesterday. Today was the first day that they arrived in force. They caught a bushel on a 1200 foot line today, but only 5 crabs yesterday. So it looks like better crabbing days are finally ahead of us. The crabs were good. I steamed them with some corn....yum What I did notice, that despite their nice size, their shells were brittle, easy to crack. They were not hard yet, so they must have shed recently, but they had allot of meat.
"Crab Whisperer" Over and Out.
The first thing that I noticed was that the commercial crabbers had trot lines deployed almost at every shoreline and channel, not leaving me many options. I used my canoe today, not my kayak for this test run in locating crabs. I deployed my line near to one of my spots that was barely available. I left my line of chicken necks soak for 5 minutes and then I ran down my line. To my surprise I caught 5 crabs in the 5.5 inch to just over six inches on the first run! The crabs have arrived I told myself! Well, I did very little fishing since I was catching crabs. It was hard to do both. I ended up with 31 crabs, and called it quits by 12:30 pm. I caught two to four crabs per run down the line. All were large males. I only saw one female. For every crab that I caught, I lost one. The crabs would jump off early before I could get to them since I began to crab when the sun was getting high in the sky as opposed to early morning daylight.
I believe SurfDog ended catching two small croakers on bloodworms, and Mike caught a small rockfish.
It was not a stellar crab run for me, but the crabs seem to be moving in now. I spoke to another crabber, and they told me the crabbing was dead yesterday. Today was the first day that they arrived in force. They caught a bushel on a 1200 foot line today, but only 5 crabs yesterday. So it looks like better crabbing days are finally ahead of us. The crabs were good. I steamed them with some corn....yum What I did notice, that despite their nice size, their shells were brittle, easy to crack. They were not hard yet, so they must have shed recently, but they had allot of meat.
"Crab Whisperer" Over and Out.
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