Article by Sue Foster
You have a little boat and you go out there flounder fishing every day. Sometimes you feel like doing something different! We did exactly that the other day. We grabbed a crab net, a couple packs of chicken necks, a half dozen crab throw lines and decided to do a little “chicken necking” for blue crabs.
The most important thing to know about blue crabs is that the larger male crabs run close to the green marshes in 4 to 8 feet of water in the bays far away from the Rt. 50 Bridge. You can anchor up from north of the Thorofare in the West Channel to up past the Rt. 90 Bridge. You can venture into Herring Creek or crab close to the green marshes, north of the Rt. 90 Bridge. The ADC map of Ocean City actually circles this area as “crabbing.” A creek area where the water is slightly brackish is always good. In the East Channel you can crab anywhere north of 33rd Street.
In the bay behind Assateague, anywhere by the green marshes going south past the Airport all the way to past the Verrazano Bridge and around by South Point or into Ayres Creek (if you live back there) is good. Stop and try a location. If nothing happens in 15-20 minutes, try another one.
Female crabs tend to be in running water closer to the inlet. If you are only catching female crabs you are crabbing in water that is too deep, too sandy a bottom, or too close to the inlet. This year, in 2010, crabbers in the coastal bays ARE allowed to keep a mature female crab as long as it is not egg bearing. To me, male crabs are much, much better to eat!
Anyway, we anchored up our little boat, unraveled half the 25 feet of line off the crab throw lines which are a wire triangle with a molded weight attached. We half-hitched the line around the wire triangle where we wanted it to stop. (The whole 25-feet of line is just too much if you are crabbing in only 4 or 5 feet of water!) Then we pierced on a couple chicken necks on the wire triangles. It’s like using a giant safety pin. I noticed my husband was piercing them long ways so they didn’t dangle off the triangle and he was catching more crabs!
We let the lines sit for 4 or 5 minutes and started slowly pulling them up. When the line was REALLY heavy, we knew we had a big, rusty jimmy crab (male crab) and had to get the net. We did screw up a couple time and hit the crab with the rim of the net and scared it away. We were trying to reach too far with the net. You need to get the net close to the line and under the crab without hitting it with the rim. If you have a real little boat with a lot of stuff in it, sometimes it’s easier to net the crab yourself! We were playing around in Herring Creek, where you need a little boat because the water was very “skinny” (shallow). My husband could see the water was 3 feet here, and 3 feet there, and then would see a little hole where the water got to 4 or 5 feet and this is where he would anchor the boat and we would do the best.
We saw some people crabbing under the Herring Creek Bridge and they were doing pretty good as well. They had traps which gives you a better chance to catch more crabs. There’s no legal parking at the bridge anymore, so if you crab there, you need to get someone to drop you off. The Bridge is located just past Ocean City Floor Gallery if you are heading west.
When we were driving our little boat around after launching it at Gum Point Road, we noticed someone had put a line of crab traps out on buoys. This is a legal way to crab also. Crabbers are allowed 25 collapsible traps per boat if two crabbers are in the boat. (10 per person if crabbing from the shore.) You can also use a trotline, up to 600 feet, which are legal in the Coastal Bays in 2010. If you do either of these things, you want to be far away from boat traffic and fishermen!
I am known to write about being prepared, but in reality, I’m not always so prepared! The one thing I forgot to grab at my store was a pair of crab tongs to grab the crabs. We used some variety of kitchen tongs and they worked OK, but sometimes the crabs slipped away from us! If we netted a questionable crab, we would drop it in the bottom of the boat and then my husband would pick it up with the tongs and lay it against the ruler of the cooler and see if it was 5-inches tip to tip. (A crab caliber would have been better to have!)
If the crab was legal we put it in the cooler. I had the cooler prepared with a bag of ice spread out on the bottom of the cooler. Then I spread a wet newspaper (sorry Larry, it was an old Coastal Fisherman!) over the ice. The crabs would stay cool, but not fall in the icy water which would kill them. We made sure the crabs were dark side up. Upside down will stress them out.
We caught a couple dozen really nice crabs and took them home to cook. Most people put the crabs in a steamer pot with some water and a little vinegar in the bottom, sprinkle them with Old Bay, and steam them for 25 minutes. We have discovered in Virginia a different way that you may want to try. We clean the crabs first. Take off the shell, apron, dead man’s fingers and eye balls. You can stab them at the point of the apron to kill them first. Hose out the entrails, and then steam them cleaned! If you cook them this way, you must do it immediately after cleaning the crabs or they will get mushy. We sprinkled the layers with Old Bay and black pepper and steamed them about 20 minutes once the water got to a rolling boil. The neat part is that it’s less messy when you eat them, and the spice gets right on the crab meat. Left over crabs will last longer in the refrigerator. Hint: Either way, when the crabs are done, take off the lid so they can breathe. Then dump them out on newspaper (sorry Larry!) and let them sit 5-10 minutes before eating them!
Good crabbing….
Sue Foster is an outdoor writer and co-owner of Oyster Bay Tackle in Ocean City, MD and Fenwick Tackle in Fenwick, DE.