Blue Crabs are olive

This last week I went blue crabbing a couple of times. for anyone reading this post from the midwest, I will explain a little about blue crabs. This species lives in estuaries ( places where freshwater runs into salt water like Chesapeake Bay or in my case Narragansett Bay). They are fairly easy to catch by a variety of methods. They are kind of small compared to Alaskan King Crabs. To be a legal size in Massachusetts a blue has to be five inches from the point on one side of the shell to the other. They are very good to eat although you definitely have to work for the meat inside. They make cracking a lobster look easy. They are definately olive and not blue, but I guess blue crab sounds better.
There are many ways to catch blue crabs. Some easier than others. The way we do it is to buy some chicken drumsticks tie them to some kite string and throw it into the water. You wait for a while for a crab to tug at your chicken . When you see a tug ( or feel you waited long enough) you pull the string in slowly. If a crab is on it will hold on for dear life. It doesn't want to give up its meal. You get it close to shore and scoop it up with a net. If you try to lift the crab out of the water on the chicken it will let go. Also I noticed , if you try to get it in real shallow water they will also swim off. That's all there is to it. We set out between 4-8 lines. We tie the string to sticks and stick them in the mud.

Other ways to blue crab are: You can walk in the water at night with a strong flashlight. When you see a crab it will freeze like a deer in headlights. You carefully scoop it up with a net. It is easier with two people, because you can put a net on each side if it swims. Also you can use various crab traps.

On Saturday DJ and I had a couple hours to kill. Like most of my plans, I had been thinking about crabbing for a few days. We went to Rehoboth and set out some lines. We crabbed at the Route 6 bridge on the Palmer River. We only had just under 2 hours and I had to be home at 4 pm. We ended up catching 3 but only one was on chicken. The other two were just walking by in the water and we caught them with the net. All three were legal and therefore all 3 came home with us

* One important thing to know about blue crabs. They are very aggressive. Not only will they try to pince you with there remarkably strong claws but they will attack each other. If you put blue crabs in a bucket together, they will most likely fight until only one is left alive.  I tried throwing chicken in the bucket before putting in crab #2 . It did not help, they started fighting. We decided to tie the claws shut with kite string. This worked pretty good but would have been quite time consuming if we caught  a lot of crabs. I've been told filling a bucket with seaweed helps. They burrow themselves in it.

Yesterday ( Sunday) Laurie and I went to Wareham. We spent the afternoon down there. We crabbed for a while. Then we took in the Wareham Gatemen baseball game. After the game we walked Onset Beach for 20 minutes. Finally right before dark we went to the Maritime Academy and watched fishermen catch a bunch of scup before we headed home. Notice all the fun we had and the only money we spent was on gas and a premade sub from Cumberland Farms.

The crabbing was much better than the day before. We were behind the firestation on the Agawam River. An area known as " the Narrows" We set out 5 lines and had almost constant action. Unfortunately they were almost all little. I didn't bring home any keepers. The only large one that we had on, came off just out of net reach. Laurie had never been crabbing. It was a fun new experience for her. Its fun just to be on the shore and get your feet wet. We had a lot of fun. I enjoy just trying to catch them, so I wasn't that disappointed I didn't get to eat any. I just told myself I was " catch and release crabbing."

Lastly, the reason I started thinking about crabbing was an article in On the Water about it. It was very informative you might want to check it out.. Like I said though I just tie a drumstick to a piece of kite string and give it a heave. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

Picture of string tied to a stick. I can't believe I forgot to actually take a picture of a crab. What a dumbass!