2017 Winter Dredge Report

[Neither Crab]

Things were indeed a lot different back in the 60s/70. A recreational crabber at that time was limited to 300 ft. of trotline without a commercial license.  Anyone who wanted a commercial license could buy one on the spot at any DNR office at a very reasonable cost. Most didn't bother because you could catch a bushel in a few hours with 300 ft. of trotline . Most crabbers didn't bother with a trotline if they only needed a half bushel because you could catch that many with 6 hand lines from a public wharf, pier or boat. Not only was that easily done on the pristine Easter Shore in Maryland but right in down town "Balmer"

[evinrude 130]

Recs pay a significant amount of money every year  to Md to enjoy all that the Chesapeake Bay has to offer. The recs should submit accounts of what they catch, but aren't doing it because the law doesn't require it. Yup, whatever the law allows is how folks handle their business.
 
Even with the increased amount of recs, that still doesn't mean they are out their catching fish or crabs 5-6 days a week. That total number of recs licensed is just a way to guesstimate numbers that aren't really close to being true.

 Even with  less commercial guys and  more recs,  the crabbing has been better then before the 2008 regulations were enforced.  Something to think about. Only issue I have is less mature males then before at this point. Something tells me we may start to see even less males after this season.  Lowering the limit to 5" may not be possible.

 Yes, using the old days as a comparison will make folks shake their heads. But less face it, we may never see the good old days again. But what we see today is because folks started making changes to help the resources. Without those changes, things might be even worse today.

[evinrude 130]

Here's a post from Tidalfish crabbing section.  
Subscriber



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date:Jun 2002Posts:3,442Blog Entries:1




Default






There are plenty of crabs being caught here,,mostly females, males are scarce, but there is no market for females now, & no open picking houses, they are bringing $20 or less per Bu if you can find a buyer willing to take them, they are being shipped out of state, many crabbers here have pulled their pots from the water due to the bad market.


 

[reds]

Here's a post from Tidalfish crabbing section.  
Subscriber



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Join Date:Jun 2002Posts:3,442Blog Entries:1




Default






There are plenty of crabs being caught here,,mostly females, males are scarce, but there is no market for females now, & no open picking houses, they are bringing $20 or less per Bu if you can find a buyer willing to take them, they are being shipped out of state, many crabbers here have pulled their pots from the water due to the bad market.


 

Poster lives in Delaware. JM Clayton is picking in Maryland as are others. Virginia has a few also. So does North Carolina

[SlickCam]

Anybody see any recent numbers on the number of recreational licenses issued each year? Most recent data I've ever seen was 2011 and that was 104,000. I figure it's got to be higher now but even based on that number a very conservative estimate (3 bushels per license per year) would be that recreational harvest is nearly 25% of the 60 million pounds that commercials brought in last year. That's a far cry from the 7% or so that DNR usually attributes to that sector.

[jack1747]

Anybody see any recent numbers on the number of recreational licenses issued each year? Most recent data I've ever seen was 2011 and that was 104,000. I figure it's got to be higher now but even based on that number a very conservative estimate (3 bushels per license per year) would be that recreational harvest is nearly 25% of the 60 million pounds that commercials brought in last year. That's a far cry from the 7% or so that DNR usually attributes to that sector.

Here is a interesting PDF file on that 2011 number -> http://dnr2.maryland.gov/fisheries/Documents/crab_open_house.pdf (this is only MD).  I doubt VA has a clue about the number of Rec crabbers. 

[Mikie]

Hey Jack, any idea when this Open House was supposed to occur?  Just curious because waterfront property owners have had to
register with the DNR for the last 3 years to be able to set their 2 crab pots. It's a free registration but there wasn't any mention of
the registration in the PDF.

[evinrude 130]

Found this, http://dlslibrary.state.md.us/publications/Exec/DNR/NR4-604(f)_2015.pdf      Check out table 1 for amount of different licenses issues. Only a 2.3 increase from 2011.

[reds]

Found this, http://dlslibrary.state.md.us/publications/Exec/DNR/NR4-604(f)_2015.pdf      Check out table 1 for amount of different licenses issues. Only a 2.3 increase from 2011.

Table 1 shows a 14.8% increase in recreational crabbing licenses from 2013 to 2015. 45,599 licenses issued. Also the bay sport license comes with an owners crabbing license. So that is an additional 105,000 licenses. Total 150,000 recreational crab licenses issued in 2015.

There is approximately 6000 commercial crab licenses.

[evinrude 130]

RESIDENT BAY (and Coastal) SPORT 89,985 93,074 94,291 101,077 105,901 4.8%
NON RESIDENT BAY (and Coastal) SPORT 22,471 21,011 20,937 21,045 20,155 -4.2%
5 DAY BAY SPORT 15,352
RESIDENT 7 DAY BAY AND COASTAL SPORT (New 2011) 7,032 6,410 7,227 7,395 2.3%
NON RESIDENT 7 DAY BAY AND COASTAL SPORT (New 2011) 17,274 16,880 17,289 17,126 -0.9%
PLEASURE BOAT DECAL 46,886 48,584 49,350 47,086 47,708 1.3%
BAY (and Coastal) SPORT BLIND 158 160 122 70 76 8.6%
BAY AND COASTAL SPORT REGISTRATION (New 2011) 58,683* 34,296 43,160 27,365 -36.6%
RECREATIONAL CRABBING 42,186 44,478 44,981 39,737 45,599 14.8%
NON RESIDENT RECREATIONAL CRABBING 7,181 6,745 6,359 5,272 4,649 -11.8%
RECREATIONAL CRABBING BOAT 4,297 4,645 5,078 5,985 5,305 -11.4%

 Easier this way to view.  The guesstimates some have  on crabs caught on these numbers could be right, could be wrong. As I said, recs do not report what they catch, because there isn't a law requiring them to do so.  Notice the decrease in sales on rec crabbing boat and non resident rec crabbing.

 The bay sport license allows the boat captain to catch a bushel, if he does go crabbing. So who knows what those numbers could be.

 Have to think how many crab the whole season and what number of days versus commercial folks crabbing maybe 5 days a week and how many bushel they catch a day. Be interesting to see some numbers on that.

But we all know some days are great and others not so great.

[jack1747]

Hey Jack, any idea when this Open House was supposed to occur?  Just curious because waterfront property owners have had to
register with the DNR for the last 3 years to be able to set their 2 crab pots. It's a free registration but there wasn't any mention of
the registration in the PDF.

No I don't Mike..  I don't keep up with the DNR stuff.....

Table 1 shows a 14.8% increase in recreational crabbing licenses from 2013 to 2015. 45,599 licenses issued. Also the bay sport license comes with an owners crabbing license. So that is an additional 105,000 licenses. Total 150,000 recreational crab licenses issued in 2015.

There is approximately 6000 commercial crab licenses.

Some place here on BCA forum there is a quote about the number of Rec license's issued in one season...  I remember it being in the 90K to 110K range.  Is the 6K figure just from MD?

[evinrude 130]

That 6,000 number is mentioned in a article when the DNR offered to buy back some license. It also mention that some of those 6,00 license holders were inactive. Looked, but have not saw anything online about the current number of commercial crab license holders.

 http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2009-08-17/news/0908160068_1_crabbing-state-officials-licenses



http://www.thebaynet.com/articles/0810/dnr-reminds-crabbers-of-august-31-license-buy-back-deadline.html

 The one pie chart in the link I reference does say how much money was made by rec and commercial fees and where it went to.

[reds]

No I don't Mike..  I don't keep up with the DNR stuff.....
Some place here on BCA forum there is a quote about the number of Rec license's issued in one season...  I remember it being in the 90K to 110K range.  Is the 6K figure just from MD?

Yeah the 6k is just from Maryland.

The real number (probably a little less then 6k) is written in the Maryland regs.

[Crabbyd]

I was told by a VERY informed individual, off the record, that "we don't know what to do.  We haven't any new ideas."

This statement seems to be the most accurate in my eyes.

[evinrude 130]

I was told by a VERY informed individual, off the record, that "we don't know what to do.  We haven't any new ideas."
[/quot



Could be true, there is a new sheriff in town. We've seen some moves that are questionable. As far as new ideas, well, plenty of folks have an opinion of what should be done, LOL.

[reds]

I was told by a VERY informed individual, off the record, that "we don't know what to do.  We haven't any new ideas."

Right now the leash is short on DNR.

They don't have any new ideas because the recent firings have closed their mouths for the better.

[Hawgscaldr]

" There are plenty of crabs being caught here,,mostly females, males are scarce, but there is no market for females now, & no open picking houses, they are bringing $20 or less per Bu if you can find a buyer willing to take them, they are being shipped out of state, many crabbers here have pulled their pots from the water due to the bad market. "


 

Poster is a commercial crabber out of Quimby VA.

[reds]

" There are plenty of crabs being caught here,,mostly females, males are scarce, but there is no market for females now, & no open picking houses, they are bringing $20 or less per Bu if you can find a buyer willing to take them, they are being shipped out of state, many crabbers here have pulled their pots from the water due to the bad market. "


 

Poster is a commercial crabber out of Quimby VA.

I know who rj is.  Glad to see he acquired a Virginia license of late. Originally lived on the Gunpower. My mistake on Delaware.
My point was they are picking like [Sam Hill] across the bay in Virginia and up the bay in Maryland.

I saw females selling for $9.00 a dozen this weekend.

[evinrude 130]

Dredge report may be right about more females, but next year it may not be so.  If males are scarce, females will be the hot ticket for steaming. Just have to wait and see if the males finally show up. Hope so, recs can only catch males.

 There's a post in the "crabs for sale" section. $10 a dozen for small/medium females. Large females sold out.  Add in crab houses picking females for crab meat . Males and females might take a beating this year.

[Crabbyd]

I know who rj is.  Glad to see he acquired a Virginia license of late. Originally lived on the Gunpower. My mistake on Delaware.
My point was they are picking like [Sam Hill] across the bay in Virginia and up the bay in Maryland.

I saw females selling for $9.00 a dozen this weekend.

Reds

There was such a glut of sooks and #2's a couple weeks ago you could get mixed females for $5/doz retail from the "Bounty" as a Friday special.  #2 males were buy 2 doz get 1 doz free.