I agree 100%. It's a weird year. I've been crabbing the Navesink years since Chris Landing in Sea Bright ( Shrewsbury) closed in the 1980's. It's a disappointing year. That happens. The over abundance of females like August- October generate there. I've never seen.
I started to keep an electronic log- Here is November in recent years:
Crab Trap History
DATE- PLACE
TOTAL SST (Degr) Maj Tide
11/4/2014 NAVESINK JUGGING 33 Lrg & Med Males 49.6⁰ Lo 13:18
11/11/14 Navesink JUGGIN 67 Lrg & Med males 49.2⁰ Hi 11:48
11/3/2015 NAVESINK & SHREWSBURY 47 large males 56.3⁰ Hi 14:24
11/8/2016 NAVESINK 84 large males 51.7 Hi 14:54
11/3/2017 NAVESINK 82 medium MIX 58.8 Lo 1548
11/7/2018 NAVESINK 47 Medium 54.6 Lo 1518
11/5/2019 NAVESINK (Anchored) 23 Mediums 54.4 Hi 15:30
There all kinds of theories why. Like too much or little rain. Too hot. Too much or little sea cabbage floating along.
Jugging truly is the way to get a huge haul and is far superior to anchoring. Obviously crabbing in a dozen different spots at the same time or some here THREE DOZEN different spots should be more efficient. A lot more work is put in. In fact I anchored last Tuesday b/c I did not feel like running a boat around picking up floats for 3 or 4 hours. RELAXATION.

Or laziness. Whatever.
And it's stating the obvious outcome- that keeping only males throwing back all females until that's almost all that's left is the result. Like in August-October in the Sink. In Barnie, nearly no one jugs and just anchors. And they get their share of big males as recently as last week. Go figure. It's probably a combination of the obvious and the unknown(s).
Agree totally. Too many "jugging" crabbers with a few dozen traps each and catching multiple bushels of crabs each and every day during July and August have depleted the reserve of male crabs this fall and basically only left female crabs . I crab the old school way handlines and a few traps from my anchored boat and take only what I can eat which is a half bushel every other week or so. Granted female crabs come in and are the main catch in September but this year has been different. Small male crabs and not that many of them in October and November which is prime time for jumbo males.Maybe it is just a bad year but when I go out and see hundreds of trap floats looks like a sea of oranges floating maybe it is time to put boat limits not just per crabber limits. Just my thoughts. Been crabbing the Shrewsbury since 1971