Let's talk some crab.

About two weeks ago the stone crabs made their first appearance of the 2010 season.  Johnny Soesbee, a local crabber, reported that he is catching stone crab in his blue crab traps on the back side of the narrow seaward islands.  That makes perfect sense... high salinity and oysters.  The shallow water allows the sun to heat the bottom mud faster.  And, the water temperature is consistently running from 58-60F.  Josiah helped move traps from the harbor reaches to the barrier islands.  We baited heavy with pig feet to see what would happen.  And...we got our first piece in interesting 'research' information.

Over the past week or so we have being concentrating nine of our traps just behind Folly Island.  While crabbers all around us were catching loads of 'stones', we netted... an excessive amount of mud, tons of snails, two dog fish, one spider crab, and ... one little stone crab.  Pig's feet are the bait of choice in Florida, but the water is warmer and their season doesn't start until May.  Cold water doesn't disperse scent as broadly as warm water so the SCKs are going to have to 'get stinky'er'.  Well, at least the bait is going to have to be stinky'er.

So, today Sarah and I pulled seven of the nine traps and baited them with menhaden, a very smelly, oily fish commonly used as crab bait in the Carolinas.  We'd like to say we left the other two of the nine pots baited with pig's feet to conduct some serious scientific comparisons between the catching potential of hog bait vs fish bait.  Actually, Capt. Dad had to rush back to the landing because his 'striker'  (the helper / sorter / baiter / pot hauler person in a crab boat) had to .... well she .... ummm .... let's just say she had finished off a really big bottle of soda!!!