Today we went crabbing again. Got up slightly after the crack of dawn (dawn comes a bit too early these days) and tootled off to the nearest pier. We brought chairs for comfort, and set them up before baiting our traps and chucking them into the briny deep (shallows, actually- but deep sounds better).
Pretty place, isn’t it? There was a LOT of seaweed in the water, along with jellyfish…I made a video of one about the size of a dinner plate, opening and closing up. Looked a bit like a sunflower, or a fried egg:)
I also saw a couple of seals, a heron and quite a few Canada geese. Â Back to crabbing…
The first pot we pulled in had one small red rock crab and a lot of seaweed. The seaweed at this location resembled ribbons, unlike the huge leafy fronds we encountered at Sidney. Discouraging, but we persevered. The next pot we pulled in had three small red rock crabs…small, but determined to hang onto the nets. We carefully disentangled them, and put them back in the water.
In the end, we had our limit. Four decent sized red rock crabs:
Can you crab where you live? If you like crab, it is a nice way to make sure you have nice, fresh crab. Make sure you get a license and do not take any restricted crab. In my area, you cannot take female crabs, undersized crabs or soft-shelled crabs. If you are returning a female, soft-shell or undersized crab, don’t be a jerk. Return it as gently as possible. After all, if it’s female, she may contribute many years of crabs for you to catch, and if it is male, you might catch him again when he is big enough to eat.
There are many kinds of crab traps…we use a casting crab net and a fold-up crab trap. The casting one we toss out and retrieve about every 20 minutes. The larger one sits on the bottom for an hour or two, and is periodically hauled up and checked. Like this: