Thursday, July 31, 2008

Late night crabbin'



As I said in yesterday's post, I went crabbin' down at the pier near my house. The crab season here has been slow, and everyone I know, even commercial crabbers are having a hard time finding crabs. I happened to check the Coast Guard buoy close to where I live on the web, and saw that the water temp had increased 6 degrees since the last time I checked. Everyone around here had been predicting mid August for when the crabs would start to show due to the warmer weather, so I figured, what the heck ? My sons and I set up some poles fishing the bottom for croakers, and started baiting our crab baskets.
I use both crab pots, and crab baskets for crabbing, but in this post, I will be explaining the baskets. It is basically a collapsible wire net basket with a drawstring, and a baited hook in the center. You can use old fish heads, or chicken necks for bait. Attach the bait to the suspended hook, and lower the basket into the water like in the first pic. I use lightweight nylon cord that floats, so when the basket is on the bottom, the line will float. Keep a little tension on the cord, and wrap around the pier rail. Make sure to crab in shallow water, around 5' to 8' has worked good for me. Then all you do is wait for the cord to start shaking!



Once you see the cord moving, you pull it up out of the water in a quick, steady motion. The outside ring rises up first, creating a net, and traps the crabs. Using this method, and fishing 4 baskets at a time, I can catch around a bushell in about an hour. Last night it took about 3 hours, but that was OK, because we also caught 9 croakers, and around here, crabs are selling for $100 bucks a bushell green, and $125 bucks + for cooked. Lets see, $1.50 for chicken necks= a bushell of crabs. That's a good deal for me ! I got out of the house, caught some fish, and got a bushell of crabs for cheap. If you want to try this on your own, you can get the baskets at any fishing supply or sporting goods store. Even the Wall-Mart here sells them. They go for about $5 bucks each, and last for years. I still have some that are 8 or 9 years old that I use. Well, that was my night. I had fun, and got to hang out with my boy's. If you have a good crabbin tip, leave me a post, because you learn something new everyday !!



2 comments:

HawgWyld said...

Heh, heh.

Catching crabs in Arkansas means something completely different...

The Natural State Hawg

lot 2 learn said...

I'm scared to ask