Patience and exploration pays dividends when seeking callinectes sapidus; yes, indeed, we caught blue crabs!
Call it the mid-summer lull—the crabbing in our local rivers has been entirely hit or miss for many folk who ply the waters spot searching for blue crabs. After a hot run of crabs moving up and into the tributaries during late spring and first weeks of summer, predicting their location gets a bit tricky. By now, they’ve undergone a molt or two, they’re beginning to pair up to make babies, water quality becomes an issue, and, quite frankly, they’ve been fished hard in popular locations. Nevertheless, on yet another gorgeous morning, my beautiful bride and I took to the Severn River with about 25 box traps to see if we could find good crabs.
Several weeks ago, we set our baseline for expectations by catching a dozen-and-a-half quality crabs between two hot spots in the Round Bay vicinity. Large, heavy crabs. One zone was parallel to expansive grass beds in water varying in depth from 4 to 10 feet. The other within a creekshed, along a shoreline in 8 to 11 feet. On this new morning of crabbing, we decided to try for a repeat performance. After all, we humans are creatures of habit and as anglers are drawn to where we have found past success. It’s a blessing and a curse.
We launched at 5:20 a.m. and headed downriver to our first “hot spot.” Here, we deployed the traps, baited with razor clams, in the same line along the grassbeds as before. We motored back to trap #1 and took an extra 10 minutes to watch the burnt orange sunrise with some nice pastel pink-and-blue sky framing it. By the time we began pulling up the first trap, it had soaked about a half hour. Trap #1 had a baby blue. Trap two, another baby. Number three, empty. So on and so forth. We made one run through all the traps, then another. We culled baby crabs from just about every other pot and had only three keeper-size mediums to show for the effort.
Sensing the crabs may be holding in deeper water, we relocated everything to our creek spot and set all traps in a line of 8–11’ deep. The creek was mostly quiet and peaceful, with the exception of a striper school that was roaming throughout and bubbling up in bursts to feed on balls of baitfish. I wish I had a rod ‘n reel to catch a few for fun. In fact, we marked a lot of life in the creek and, in the distance away from us, was a small boat with two anglers. Later, we would have a chat with them and confirm that they were targeting white perch. I marked a couple small pods of perch in the river and told them as much. Truth be told, this is the creek that I’ve had the most success fishing for perch, dating back to 2008.
But the crabbing…not so good this time around. We made two runs through all traps and, despite catching several small crabs, didn’t attract any big enough to keep. Sigh. Time to move, again.
We ran upriver to a creek closer to our home and figured we had enough time in the day (before other obligations came into play) to make one more setup. This time we tested the backwaters by deploying our traps in a straight line directly down the middle of the creek channel in 10’ of water that gradually rose up to 5’. I’ll admit that my hope for catching crabs here was mild at best. And yet…
A couple trap pulls in, we caught a very nice #1 jumbo crab. A few pulls later, another big one. By the time we completed our first run through all traps, we had potted about 10 big crabs. Clearly, they were here!
My wife and I circled back and went through the traps again. With most of the crabs in the previous run coming in the shallower water, we decided to pull up the first seven traps sitting in deeper water and relocate them to the shallows at the end of our second run-through. Making adjustments like this is part of the crabbing game. Work with nature’s tells. We hauled up another eight or so big crabs on the second run.
With crabbing this good, we squeaked in one more run, hoping that a few more crabs would show themselves, especially in the batch of traps resting in the 5’ zone. The hunch played out well for us, as we got a last batch of about six or so crabs. All of these crabs were nice #1s, with a couple megas (largest 8” tip to tip) mixed in. Altogether we pulled over two dozen crabs this morning. A modest catch, but more than enough for our family to enjoy.
The lesson from this outing. Sometimes—probably more often than not—it takes patience and exploration to find the crabs. Just like fish, they move. They relocate. Yesterday or last week’s hot spot might not play out the next time, so be ready to try different depths, zones, structure, etc. Spot searching for blue crabs can pay dividends when you have time and an open mind on your side.
See y’all on the water again, real soon!
