Galveston 06-29-2012

I went out this morning at about 7 a.m. I was planning on pulling my traps in to relocate them and do a little crabbing from while I was at it. The last two weeks we have a caught some good sized crabs from shore by a culvert at the front of the salt pond I crab.

When I pulled up I saw a car parked at the entrance and found that I was too late for my spot. I stopped to talk to the three crabbers and was told that they were not doing too well. They were trying to get a small crab out of their net and they dumped it into their ice chest instead of the water where it belonged. I looked in the ice chest and saw one good sized keeper and about five or six that could not have been more than 4”. I mentioned that they had better not let a game warden catch them with the undersized crabs and the elder gentleman told me that he was getting ready to throw them back because he crabs here a lot and wanted to have a better supply of crabs. I continued getting my kayak out and noticed that he must have intended to release the crabs in his own backyard, because they were still in the ice chest when he walked back to his car.

After looking at their catch and the abundance of mosquitos by the culvert, I decided to crab from my kayak. I put out about 15 chicken neck baited hand lines attached to 4 inch pool noodle floats. On my first run I had not gotten a bite on the first 11 lines. I was thinking about pulling the lines up and moving. The last four lines yielded one keeper, one just under sized crab, one real small, and one that dropped off just out of reach.

I pulled one of my traps out and brought it to shore and then started a second run. I noticed one of my lines had moved about fifty feet from where I had put it in. I pulled it first and pulled in the first 6 incher of the day. I ended up with eight keepers on that run. I ran the lines for about 2 hours and ended the day with 20 crabs all over 5½, with half of them over six inches.

The only problem with the crabs over six inches is that my wife claims them for herself. Grilled crabs tonight!