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STD


jsharr

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Been a long time since I've been crabbing.  Are small traps the thing now?

Instead of the traps the commercial guys use, we often ran a "trot line:" a thin rope about 100' long supported by 5 or more floats made from empty gallon milk jugs.

Strings are tied every 6 feet or so along the rope, each with a piece of bait (something cheap like chicken wings, necks, etc.) hanging on the bottom end.

As you, quietly as possible, paddle/drift a small boat along the length of the rope, you check the strings - you very slightly lift and you can feel by the weight if a crab has latched onto the bait.

When you've got one, a second person holds a crab net - a pole with about a 1' diameter net where the original string netting is torn off and replaced with chicken wire so the crabs won't tangle themselves in it with their claws.

The net is held steady just above the water and the string is slowly raised or else the crab will jump off the bait.  When the crab comes into view about 1' deep, the netter quickly dips the net in the water and catches it.

Up until about the mid-80's, it was typical to go to a cove on the bay and walk along the seaweed and catch crabs with simply a net in your hand.  You typically had a bushel basket sitting in an inner tube attached to your belt with a rope.  You kept another basket or bucket on the shore for "soft crabs," crabs that have shed their old shell and their new one hasn't hardened yet: they are a friend delicacy in Maryland.  Two of us would go to a promising cove we heard about through the grapevine at 5 am on a Saturday.  By noon we'd typically have a bushel (6-7 dozen) of hard crabs and a dozen soft crabs and take them back for the afternoon party scheduled for our back yard.  If we didn't catch crabs, we'd buy some on the way home and say we caught them.

Now, there's been too much housing build-up along the bay and tributaries, the seaweed has been eliminated in too many places, and it's not as easy to find places like those old, empty coves today.

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One of my favorite local breweries makes a limited edition called Silver Tongued Devil. I got a growler of it the last time it was offered. As the bartender was putting the cap on, she realized the whole name would not fit so she wrote STD, furrowed her brow and wasn't sure she liked having that on their beer! 

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