Good news! The Oak Hill fishing dock made it through the hurricane.
Today is my birthday and all I wanted was some blue crab so I headed over to the culvert in Oak Hill yesterday morning. I had 5 chicken legs with me. Arrived at high tide.
No bait fish *at all*. Last time I was able to catch a few spots with chicken and use them to fish but yesterday nothing.
Tossed my crab nets in and five minutes later I had one nice big male crab and a smaller one.
And then it started. I was pulling 3-4 crabs per net every 5 to 10 minutes for at least an hour. I caught more females than I ever had along that spot because they are mating. I caught at least 3 pairs of mating crabs.
I think I ended up catching about 40-50 crabs, came home with 24 in the 5.5-7" range. Tossed back all the females, any jimmies under 5-6" and about a dozen of the "purple" crabs I have been catching there. I cooked one a few weeks ago and it was foul, not taking any of those.
The chicken legs I used were getting chewed up to the bone. And then I saw it. A mangrove snapper about 20" long swam by with a giant hunk of chicken sticking out of its mouth. I suspected it was fish chewing oh my bait but that's the first time I saw it with my own eyes.
About the time they stopped biting a family of people rolled up and one man walked over & opened my cooler. So I walked over and they were having a lively discussion in Chinese. They offered to buy my catch! LOL, no. Catch your own. Then one of the men asked me what I thought about him building a restaurant right there. I pointed out Goodrich's (about 50 yards away) and then said I definitely didn't want anyone ruining the fishing and crabbing right there.
Will be going back as long as the weather holds. It was beautiful but a bit windy. Blew my chair into the water.
Tonight there will be a feast at my house.
