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I took today off Friday from work, so I could go crabbing. I have not been all year, in part, due to the poor crabbing reports. The cool spring temperatures seemed to delay the crabs, along with other fish species. Well, things are starting to turn so I decided to go out for a few hours to give my crabbing gear a shake down. High tide at Carr's Wharf was at 8:53 am. For my first trip, I decided not to leave super early in the morning to get a crabbing spot. Armed with 600 feet of chicken necks, I headed down to Carr's Wharf and launched at 9:00am. I would get to crab the outgoing tide. The water temperature was 75 degrees and the winds were 15 mph, but in the protection of the river, it was more like 9 mph. A brief rain shower came down, but the sun would soon shine and the daytime temperatures would reach in the 70's.
There were a lot of commercial crabbers out. All of my usual spots were taken, so I went further up the river and found a spot along the shoreline where I crabbed a long time ago. I deployed my trot line from 4 feet of water all the way to 7 feet of water. I began running the trot line almost immediately. I was catching crabs on every run. Not a lot of keepers, but enough to keep it interesting. Sometimes I would get 5 keepers on a run, and other times I would get two. I lost 10 crabs due to a problem with my dip net. Some of the holes were stretched and big enough to let the crabs escape and fall thru. I took some time and fixed the net, and continued crabbing. When the crabbing slowed down, I moved my line once into deeper water, so the entire line was in 6 to 7 feet. I caught very little at this depth. This could have been due to the fact that the crabs just shut down for the day. It was 12 noon. So with 1/2 bushel of crabs, I had enough for a good meal and headed in. I probably crabbed for 1 hour and 45 minutes. The rest of the time was deploying the line, and then moving the line a second time and fixing my net. This is why it is good to do shake down run to get rid of all the bugs. On the way to shore, I ran into two other kayak crabbers. They were using traps. At least one of them recognized me from my Youtube video and the other one took a picture of me with my rigged kayak when I got to shore. He also had run into Metroman before in his kayak crabbing travels. Most of the crabs that were kept were 5.25 to 5.5 inches with a few 6 to 6.5 incheres thrown in. The shells on many of them were not real hard, and some where light, but they all tasted good.
There were a lot of commercial crabbers out. All of my usual spots were taken, so I went further up the river and found a spot along the shoreline where I crabbed a long time ago. I deployed my trot line from 4 feet of water all the way to 7 feet of water. I began running the trot line almost immediately. I was catching crabs on every run. Not a lot of keepers, but enough to keep it interesting. Sometimes I would get 5 keepers on a run, and other times I would get two. I lost 10 crabs due to a problem with my dip net. Some of the holes were stretched and big enough to let the crabs escape and fall thru. I took some time and fixed the net, and continued crabbing. When the crabbing slowed down, I moved my line once into deeper water, so the entire line was in 6 to 7 feet. I caught very little at this depth. This could have been due to the fact that the crabs just shut down for the day. It was 12 noon. So with 1/2 bushel of crabs, I had enough for a good meal and headed in. I probably crabbed for 1 hour and 45 minutes. The rest of the time was deploying the line, and then moving the line a second time and fixing my net. This is why it is good to do shake down run to get rid of all the bugs. On the way to shore, I ran into two other kayak crabbers. They were using traps. At least one of them recognized me from my Youtube video and the other one took a picture of me with my rigged kayak when I got to shore. He also had run into Metroman before in his kayak crabbing travels. Most of the crabs that were kept were 5.25 to 5.5 inches with a few 6 to 6.5 incheres thrown in. The shells on many of them were not real hard, and some where light, but they all tasted good.
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