Wye River 10/29/24 - Fat lady didn't sing yet

[Wallco99]

Start: 8:01
Water temp: 58.5
Wind Speed: SSE @ 3 MPH
Key Depth: 12'-14'
Gear: 1200' trotline w/ CN, 18 topless traps w/CN
Finish: 12:37 to fill basket (no cull runs needed)
         

Very brisk morning. 38 degree air temp when we arrived at the dock. The parking lot was empty, and it stayed that way for a long time. In fact, I only saw four other boats all day long. I love those fair weather crabbers. There was a slight fog on the water, and my spotlight decided to pick today to finally die on me. No big deal. Unless there was a body floating in the water, I was pretty confident we could navigate to where we needed to get. We made it out to our spot, and did our normal "wait in the dark" hover. Last week we absolutely kicked a ss with traps, however, in the end, it turned out that the traps wound up kicking my a ss. LOL. We decided to bring the line back out this week, along with the topless traps. We kept our rings in the bag, and decided that if the line sucked and the traps did good again, then we would wrap up the line and break out the rings. We laid our line in the spot where we had the best luck the previous week. The line ran from 11' to 17' then back down to 12'. We were set up right at the bottom of a ledge, exactly where I wanted it. We laid out our 18 topless traps in three different spots, at all depths. And we continued to move them all over the place throughout the day. Remarkably, the line significantly out caught the traps this week. However, only certain sections of the line that were in 12'-14' water were producing. Virtually nothing on the deeper parts of the line, unlike last week, in which our traps were finding crabs in deeper waters.. So we moved most of our traps to locations around our line in the 12-14 areas, and then we started seeing  better numbers in traps. It took a little longer today, and some of the crabs were a little smaller than last week. But there were still mostly all very nice size crabs, and this week, ZERO runs were needed at the end of the day to cull for heavier crab. Every one was dark and heavy. There were very few shorts, and only three females all day. WE did see a bunch of dropoffs, but enough hung on to allow us to fill up in 4.5 hours. I'll definitely take that for a late October trip. Thinking about one more stab at it next week if we can free up some time to get out.
My first mate pictured with this week's catch, and you can see the crescent moon in the sunrise photo. I love a good crescent moon. LOL.

[Logical1]

Great Job Rick! Like I said in another post, " very hard to beat years of built up knowledge of a specific area". 

[Wahoo]

Another fine catch!  Crab on...

[Captain Seaweed]

Nice Crabs Very Nice Flag

[Billycrab]

Great catch Rick!!

[mark fix]

Nice to know i may make it out again this year,great catch great flag.

[discover]

Another great trip and more crab meat for the freezer. The late fall crabbing is always my favorite time of year to crab. Fall colors on the trees, geese flying, less boat traffic and cooler temps makes for a great day. 

[DCCrabber]

Mr Wallco, I'm thinking of making one more trip this upcoming week.  Do you think they are still closer to the ramp then the mouth?  Or do you think I need to head to the mouth?  Last trip I was just south of Pickering creek (I think that is what the GPS said) but I don't know how much further to the mouth it is from there.  I see you did good again last week.  I'm impressed with the ability to find them.

[Wallco99]

We're going again Thursday. With the water in the 50's, we'll probably move down river a bit. Not all the way down, but further than we have in weeks past.

[pkraft]

We are all waiting to hear how you do today.lol
I'm going to rock hall Saturday to try 20 to 30ft.

[Wahoo]

For all those out crabbing today,,, I AM JEALOUS!    Beautiful day to be fall crabbing.. good luck everyone, our boat is done for the year!