Pickers Needed

Blue crab pickers that is.
Novice need not apply; as all they want to do is drink your beer.

Have 4 hampers of blue crabs.
Got my 80 quart pot all cleaned up and ready to go.
Better get here early if you expect to elbow your way to the table.

I can bring the sweet corn!

Lord knows my family would be all over that. would be like a pack of rats in a corn crib. Me not so much, the time it takes me to peel them versus my hunger level usually equates to starvation for me. Now those little baby lobsters are a different story.

I know they had a commercial ban on crabs earlier in the year cause we had stopped in Lafayette on the way home to pick some up for my wife. Is that over with?

I'll see if my wife can whip up some potato salad!

I'm with DC1 - when that dinner bell rings, ya'll best look out cause I'll be a-comin' through!! :lol: Ain't gonna be wastin' no time on no danged crab shells! Heck, bring on that sweet corn!! :mrgreen:

I remember one time Dad went fishing in the Gulf with some friends. Came back with similar results. He was giving fish to anyone in the neighborhood who would take it! I was pretty young at the time so not exactly sure what kinda fish, but they were fairly small.

Have had nights like that sittin' out under a full moon fishing for Crappie. Would end up running out of bait, so would just throw the hook in the water and almost instantly bring in another fish! :shock:

John, John, John....thanks so much for the tromp down that memory lane!! Yup, there's some times I truly miss the south! ...But I love Winter too much to leave up here! :wink:

Yes the ban is over.
Runs for 30 days starting the 3rd Monday in February.
Current law has it in effect for 2018 and 2019 also.
They will then decide what effect it had on the population.

Was many protest as this was the first year for the ban.
It has a impact well over 30 days as you have to have your traps out the water for the full 30 days.
When you have hundreds of traps to pick up and put out you can figure a extra few weeks on each end.
While I can see the ban effecting crabbers right in the heart of the season because of lent when seafood is in high demand; crabbing is really a summer time harvest.
And I would rather the ban than for us to get like Maryland with reduced supply.
The ban did not effect recreational crabbing as it was only on the commercial side.

Yea, I was shocked. We had been in Youngsville seeing kids, usually stop in Lafayette at Chez Francois to take back some seafood north. Was the first day of the ban and those folks were not happy. Neither was my wife.

Back when I was Stationed at Damneck VA we would go crab fishing with chicken necks and a long dip net on a long pole. Then we would take them home and boil them up and have a very good cheap meal. At times I miss being on the coast and being able to get fresh sea food. When in Groton CT lobster was super cheap so had a lot of that up there

When I used to go down to Texas to visit my sister one of my favorite things was to go down to her beach house on Galveston Island and get crabs, we caught them on a long line baited with
chicken necks.There used to be a great little place in Galveston to get shrimp fixed about a dozen different ways.

Well....I ain't gonna be fighting you for them! Sea going bugs!

Get out the Chesapeake Bay Powder !

Always thought those blue crabs were neat looking. Never ate one though. Caught -one- in a pier dip net in S Carolina, looked it over, and threw it back

That's exactly the same way we did it in exactly the same place when I was growing up. We'd fish the troughs between the beach and the first sandbar...usually 3 bars, next 2 troughs between them were too deep. Only difference is we used chicken scraps from a restaurant.

Had to work the crabs at the end of a full moon as they fed under the light and the claws and body cavities were full of meat; otherwise could be near empty. Had to watch out for the lungs; were told they didn't digest well....no reason to eat them anyway. Also did not keep females. Females were easily identified by a wide tab on the belly rather than the thin one like you see in John's coolers. Only thing to go with them was s shot of "Worchestershire Sauce"...."Made by a gentleman in the country" as the logo states.....good stuff even when you sip it out of a teaspoon with nothing else.....makes your eyes water. Has a real tang. Grin I loved it on the claw parts.

Funny thing John, on a trip to Lafitte the commercial crabbers (who had some slick "Jimmy" diesel powered planing boats) kept females. To us it was like shooting doe deer.

"commercial crabbers kept females. To us it was like shooting doe deer"

That may be fixing to change.
They are looking for ways to stop over fishing.
We had our first ever fishing ban on blue crabs this year.
More research is needed to find what works best.

But if you understand the life cycle of a blue crab they do have limits.
A female crab reaches maturity and mates one time.
From this one mating she can have up to 6 or 7 broods in one year; 18 or so over her life time.
The state limits crab taken by commercial fishermen to at least 5 inches.
By the time the female reaches 5 inches she has most likely reached maturity and had several broods.

Then you have to consider the dance the WL&F plays with parasites.
Female blue crabs get a worm that feeds on her egg sack and lives in her gills when she does not have a egg sack.
The Chesapeake bay area is over whelmed with this worm. One of the reasons for their reduced crab population.

So by letting the female to reach maturity she spawns replacing the stock.
They do this with the 5 inch minimum size.
But also taking mature females they keep the parasite worm in check.

So it is not like shooting a doe deer when you know the whole story.

No Bay powder around here.

We want something with some bite so we use Zatarain's Crab Boil.

When voters' opinions disagree with biologists' opinions,lawmakers are between the rock and hard place. Since killing doe deer was brought up,let's talk about the results. In most of Texas,it is illegal to shoot deer with less than 13" spread except doe and spikes.When state biologists first made the reccomendation,it took over 50 years to pass a law. At the beginning,you had to tag a doe before killing a mature buck,now the doe is required before killing second mature buck. We see far more nice bucks hearvested now and it get's better every year. Several years ago,state biologists recommended hunters and farmers kill every feral hog they saw,even if remains were left for buzzards. Greedy landowners persisted in charging hunters a fee to kill hogs. Now those same landowners are hireing professionals to control hog population.