I know in Connecticut you have to attend all traps and they have to be star, net etc... but I am looking for a way to leave pots overnight. If i get a commercial license will that allow leaving pots overnight. It says in the description of the license that you can use commercial equipment, which gives me the idea that I can use pots but I want to make sure I am understanding this right.
The folks at DEP and the Enviro Police are very helpful on the phone, which is particularly nice since the laws here are so vague. If you are looking to sell crabs wholesale you will need a license from somewhere I'm sure, as your customers will need the license number on file. If you're just looking for crabs for domestic consumption (you and your friends) and you have a boat, lots of people drop commercial "Chesapeake Style" pots off their boats at mooring on thin, carefully concealed lines. These commercial pots are sold in bright daylight at tackle shops all along the shoreline. Clearly illegal to use them without a license, but it is done all the time. I'm not saying that's right, I'm just saying....
I personally don't do that. But for what it's worth, we don't have a sustainable population of blue crabs in LI Sound. We are at the northern edge of their natural range, and maybe every third season all of the over-wintering crabs who buried themselves in the mud and silt in the fall end up starving out due to a long cold winter. Crabs are cold-blooded, and though they "hibernate" they can only last so long without food, and a prolonged cold winter can starve them before they become warm enough to emerge and start feeding heavily again. I think that is why it seems that no one (including the DEP) takes the regs very seriously, or even really understands them. Save a generation by heavy enforcement only to lose all their offspring next year due to unpredictable variations in winter climate? Pointless, or at least I think so.
Crabbing regulations are a lot more important in the Chesapeake than they are here, IMHO.
Good luck!
Paul
