There is a Thief Among Us!

Being as it is summer, it should be prime time for the Blue Crabs to be in the Bay. It should be the right time for my traps to be cluttered with the crustaceans. It should be the season that I am busy picking these crabs and filling my freezers with their fine meat. It should be...I have plenty of traps for the job but I also have a couple of problems with the catching part. One..it is extremely hard to catch the bait for the traps. There are so many menhaden and mullet in the Bay that most of the larger fish are just not biting. Being as I usually use fish as bait for the crabs..this presents a problem. I was told that there are so many minnows in the Bay that "if a fish even yawns, he has his belly full"! That just about sums it up! This problem could be overcome, though, as I could resort to using some other bait. I could always dig in the freezer and find some unidentifiable meat and use that as crabs are not picky eaters. They have no pride and obviously no taste buds! Crabs will eat most anything that fits into two categories..what they can catch and whatever is dead. The other problem..some critter is stealing what bait I have! I fish most every day and occasionally catch a catfish to put in the traps. On the basic crab trap, there is a "bait box" that is just that..a box for the bait. It is just large enough to poke a catfish in head first and has a hinged door that will spring closed. This is supposed to hold the bait in the trap..key word here "supposed". The trap is then dropped into the water with the bait trap door on the bottom..so the trap actually sits on top of the door..also helping keep the bait well secured.

I have no idea just what is raiding the traps. Some critter comes in the night and steals every bait. No bait..no crabs! Another disheartening thing..this same critter obviously is not happy with just stealing the fish..it messes up the entire trap! On each side of the trap, there is a door that is just big enough for a crab to crawl through. The crab..being not so bright..then cannot figure out how to go back out the door to escape. Each night, whatever critter is the thief helps the crabs escape! When I check the traps in the morning, the crawlers (as the points of entry are called in crabbers' lingo!) are all wallowed out. Instead of being flattened like the shape of a crab, they are now round and huge. It does not take the smartest of crabs to figure out how to go out a hole that is as large as the side of a barn! At first, I was blaming the playful otters as the culprits! I thought sure, these agile animals were swimming down, flipping the trap upside down, opening the bait box door and stealing my bait! Then, I started thinking.."Why in the world would the otter decide to ream out the crawler if it knew how to open the bait box door?" What would be the point of going inside the trap, if the otter knew how to open the door? Then I pondered the idea of it being the Snapping Turtles! Now these guys would definitely be strong enough to do some damage to the traps! They may not be smart like the otters and actually think they need to go inside the trap to get the bait. Perhaps the turtles just wanted to eat the crabs that were in the trap. A turtle would definitely stretch out the crawlers so they were large enough holes for the crabs to escape. After pondering this idea for a while, another thought occurred to me..gars! A gar, seeing a trapped crab, might think a free meal was for the taking! It could poke its long nose into the crawler and "grab a crab"! This would not account for the fish being taken from the bait box, though. Maybe the alligator has taken a liking to my traps! Their jaws would definitely do some major damage to the trap! Gators like both crabs and fish as a meal and this would account for the nocturnal activity!

Since this has been happening too often for my satisfaction, I decided that something needed to be done. I felt sure that if I could only keep the bait safe, the crabs would stay close..a free meal is just too enticing! Wiring the door to the bait box would be a logical answer. I found a small role of wire and proceeded to do just that. All four sides of the door was tightly wired closed. I knew that I could not do anything about the crawlers being stretched wide so I would just have to hope for the best. The traps have been set now for several nights but only a few crabs have been caught. This season is beginning to look a mite bleak as far as crabmeat is concerned!