General Crabbing Tips

Little far but 24hrs
http://www.ktvu.com/video/25606007/index.html

How strange is that..lol

http://www.ktvu.com/news/25792592/detail.html

Interesting how they catch the test crabs. Never knew they did that

I was walking by the dock when they did the interview....also saw the commies loading up trash bins full of frozen baited jars later in the afternoon.

 I'm thankful I got my yak an traps. They have such a strangle hold on crab, gotta use your life savings to buy it.

Local Ranch 99 Supermarket, if there's one local to your area.  Their buyer makes bulk purchases in Half Moon Bay during commercial crab season.  They're the biggest reason I'm holding off catching my own.  Ranch 99 prices are extremely reasonable specially when commercial season opens versus me taking precious family time off to catch my own.  I know there's the fun factor of catching your own.

I haven't crabbed enough to have a favorite bait, but I've been saving chicken carcasses and other meaty scraps and putting them into plastic containers and freezing them.  I figure on punching holes in them and wiring em to the bottom of the cage.

Using WSB or salmon heads or carcasses as crab bait is like trading gold for equal weight of silver! The carcasses belong on the smoker/barbie and the heads in stock.

Silver!?!?!?!?!?!?!!???!!!!


Surely you jest Sir.  Dungees = Diamond Encrusted Platinum my friend. 

I use duck, pheasant, goose, or turkey carcass.  I also save the guts and put them into a bait jar.  Free bait, works good.

I used some filipino shrimp paste called bagoong with my bait last sunday.  stinkie stuff works great and cheap.  got them at ranch 99

Rey

Jim,

Sorry to hear you're not in Capitola anymore, but hopefully you'll still come down and do some fishing.

As far as crabs, sounds like HMB is a good spot but if they don't have any you can always try SC Harbor. I don't remember the dock letter (could be S as suggested) and the guy sells them right off his boat. Only problem is he is a hit and miss and not always there. The gift shop just to the right of the Crows Nest sells them. You'll pay retail (I think $5.99 pound last year), but she usually has them. You can call them and she might put a hold on them for you.

Don't wait, I hear it's one of the worst times to try and buy crab along with New Year.

Dean

Frankly I'm a but surprised so many of us buy crab bait...  especially during this recession.

Wait...  Maybe I should buy crab to use for crab bait.

Seriously, though, dinner scraps/bones from a couple weeks is plenty enough to bait all four pots.

Anyone else experiencing this?  Most of the crabs I've caught are "skinny" where the meat is significantly smaller than the shell.  How about you guys that go into deeper water (150' +)? 

Nate

I used a WSB carcass from Mooch and it was the best. The crab ate most of the carcass within an hour and a half. Them is some hungry crusties.