Summer Means Crabs

Get your mind out of the gutter.  I'm living in Delaware and summertime means blue claw crabs.  Time to bait the trotline with chicken necks.  Time to wake up at 330 in the morning to run to one of the tributaries of the Chesapeake, set up the trotline and start making runs.  Time to come home, clean the boat, take a nap, then steam up the most excellent dinner you can eat.  Then when you are full, pick whatever crabs are left for crab cakes, crabs and spaghetti, crab soup, etc.

The early reports are coming in that this is going to be a great year for crabs.  The mild winter we experienced has the water temperatures about 10 degrees warmer than the same time last year.  That is leading to more numbers of crabs and bigger crabs.  Yum!

Father's Day Crabbing Trip

I apologize in advance since I'm bouncing around here right now in the beginning until I get in the flow of this blogging thing.

So for Father's Day this year (instead of playing baseball which I prefer to do) I went crabbing with my father-in-law.  He picked me up at 3:00 AM so we could head on down to the Chester River for our first crabbing run together.  We saw a beautiful sunrise over the water.

We then proceeded to set out the trot line.  For those who are reading who don't crab, a trot line is a length of nylon rope (in this case we were running 1250' the maximum allowed) with bungee cord snoods attached every so many feet (5-10 or so).  The snoods have a loop on the end so you can attach the bait (we were using chicken necks).  You anchor down the two ends of the trot line with a length of chain in the middle of the line to anchor that down.  As you run alongside the trot line, you pick up the line and net any crabs that are hanging onto your bait.  Pretty basic concept, takes a little time to get used to the execution.  When you get to the end of the line, you unhook the line from the boat and head back to the other end to do it again.  After a bushel of crabs, you head home.  We busheled out around 1000, took the boat back to its storage area, cleaned it off and headed home for some much needed rest.

That afternoon, we all got together for a crab feast!