Crabbing was the order of the weekend for the Forth of July. I bought a new kayak last week and took it out for the first time on Friday. I started out at sunrise on Jones Lake near Tiki Island. I put out 10 ring nets, and after three pulls had nothing. I decided to relocate to a salt pond on the island. Here, I began catching crabs immediately, but unfortunately they were too small. I ended up with two keepers, and they joined me with some left over claws for lunch.
As I was leaving, I spoke to a man who had a 5 gallon bucket almost filled with crabs. They were huge, as it took fewer than a dozen to almost fill the 5 gallon bucket. He had partially opened two cans of sardine and placed them in the shallow water near a drain pipe. He was just scooping the crabs up as they swam towards the cans. I've never seen anyone crab like that before, but I guess I can't argue with success since he had a bucketful and I had only 2 crabs.
On Saturday morning, I met my brother down the island near St. Luis Pass. We put out six traps (pots) and then ran about 15 ring nets. Took about 50 crabs in a very short period of time, unfortunately they were all hermit crabs. We only managed to bring in three or four blue claw crabs, but none of them were big enough to keep.
On Sunday night, I took the kayak out to a different salt pond off the feeder road as you near the island. I had a strong incoming tide that made maneuvering the kayak a little difficult, but I was able to run my 10 ring nets several times. This area was also a wash, with only one crab landed. This crab took a ride home with the family that was hand lining near where I launched.
My brother had run the traps (pots) on Saturday and Sunday evenings, and had caught 43 keeper blue claws and one stone crab. I decided it would be in my best interest to meet him to pull the traps in on Monday morning. After pulling the first three traps, we had a total of four blue claws and two stone crabs. My brother decided that I was bad luck, but the final three traps yielded 15 decent sized blue claw crabs and one huge stone crab. The largest blue claw was a female that measured slightly over 7 inches.
I'm posting a couple of photographs and a link to a video of us pulling the traps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRUgbO2dKv8I hope y'all had a great Fourth of July. My wife and I plan to catch the fireworks on the Seawall in Galveston tonight.
