So.. I work on a commercial crabbing boat out in the bay and the water was sooo freakin rough today..
Thought i was gonna go over a few times. Only got freakin one bushel, but there was this uber-sexy girl at the feul dock.

Where do you guys work?
If its one of those, "If i tell ya, i'd have to kill ya" then please, dont tell me.

i assume your talking about blue crabs? i grew up in md and we used to go out on our boat and crab every sat in the summer ,alot of fun !

Hell yea, best crab in the US from what i hear.
Wont lie though, had some texas crab and they aint half bad.
What part of MD? Im in Pasadena, we crab outside the Magothy river if ya ever heard of it.
We got about 900 or so pots out in the water.
Good times.
-Nick

i actually had some crabs from texas that were fantastic! im out of the towson area so not far from you in pasadena ,did 10 summers in oc until i flew south for life. we used to go out of essex and drop our traps and take the day at millers island or go crab linning or something.back then we would come home with a bushel every time we went ,doubt thats possible now. the second thing i miss the most is fishing for rock fish .



ps-i tried to make my wife a crab dip the other night and bought some lump and man did it smell rank , ended up throwing it away. totally miss the food from up there!

Where is Maryland?


Just kidding.

Nc, I live 30 minutes form DC in Maryland.

Nicee, yea boss keeps his boat over in the compass point area. So right near the key bridge, we sell the crab to "Capt Jimmy's Seafood" which is over near Essex.
We catch a lot of crab though, about 5 or 6 per pot and we hit about 400 pots a day. But today we called it wayyyy early because of the waves.
The big hurt though is quality, i call (sort) the crabs and there's just so much Junk.
Last season i think our best day was... 28bushel. maybe 30, cant recall.
-Nc

I'm curious. What is your opinion on "snow crab"? That is what they fish where I live (PEI, in Atlantic Canada). Other coast the crab is king crab. Would you say your varieies are superior, inferior, or don't know?

The one thing I do know is that the snow crab fishermen here make a FORTUNE because the prices really picked up several years ago.

Snow & King crab legs are very good, your crab are much larger then US crabs.
And those crabbermen make a lot more money because they bring in so much darn crab, and also fish on ships.
My work boat is only 40ft or so. And these crab pots are only 2ft squares, up in alaska & Canada the pots are huge.

But personally, i still prefer MD crab over king/snow crab.

When I speak of a "fisherman" I too mean guys with 40-50 foot boats, not guys with huge ships and crews.

It'd be neat to be able to try crab from all these different places in one sitting and compare. Someone wants to try it sometime, I can bring the butter if you bring the crabs from around the world!

Sounds good, meet in MD.

nothing like blue crabs mod- steamed not boiled! grab a case of beer for yourself , steam up a couple a dozen crabs and maybe some corn on the cob and call it a day ! whatever you dont eat you make soup.

Ah-Freaking-Men

Well, Ive been working in a Hospital print shop for the past 7 years as Asst. manager, but the new boss is trying to fire me for falling asleep. ive explained to him that my hypothyroid and medications make me sleepy (not to mention sleep apnea might be a factor), but he's being a hard ass, so I might not work anywhere anymore...

Hey Keystone. I can relate to having health issues and the medications that accompany them. Not sleeping and or being drugged because of meds makes it horribly difficult to make it through a day sometimes. I wish you the best and hang in there man.

Dave & DJ love king crab and snow crab. (Costs me fortune)...LOL

I feel bad for doing that for fun. LOL

Who doesn't? lol
But yea... price isn't too good lookin.

COME ON NC!!!

THE MITTEN CRABS ARE COMING UP THE POTOMAC TO KILL US ALL!!!!

Get on that boat and save us all!!!

You know of any places thatll ship blues on dry ice nc? i actually found a few spots here for crabs but let me tell ya,the warm water does weird things to the meat.

The guy we sell them to is Captain Jimmy, who is also a Commercial crabber. But he also runs Capt Jimmy's Seafood. He gets crabs in from all over the place, including texas. I'll have to ask him tomorrow when we run crabs up there. But i took today off. I havent gotten a day off in the last 4weeks. lol.
Well, not including yesterday.

Andddd @ Flatliner--
I haven't seen but one more of those little critters. They're small enough to fit through the pots so either they escape before the pot gets up and outta the water... or they're moving south. Maybe they'll all just head out to the ocean. o0'

LET ME KNOW NC jonezzzzzzin!

Where I live, we have another crab called the green crab found all over our beaches. I always wondered about the idea of eating them. Anyway, while looking up blue crab info I found this interesting article.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2002/03/16/...rabs020316.html

The article say they are 10 mm, but they must have meant 10 cm, which is about 4 1/2 inches, or just a little below the legal limit to blue crab (which I read was 5 to 5 1/2 inches). Too much work to eat by hand, but perhaps good for processing. Just thought the crab fisher in the audience might fnd it interesting.

Anyhoo, my question is this blue crab, what do you eat? Snow crab, you're basically only eating the legs. With blue crab, are you delving into the body area more? Do you steam it whole, or what?

There's two ways to eat a blue crab.

Soft crab:
The way a crab grows is it will basically make a duplicate of itself within its shell. But this duplication will be soft in order for it to fit inside long enough to then later bust out.
A "Peeler" Is a crab that is ready to "sluff" or bust/grow out of its shell.
The crabs ditches the old shell and all that is left is the soft crab inside. The legal limit for a "Peeler" is 3 inches. This is because the peelers can be kept and sluffed in the "Sluff tank" or controlled growing area which is built by the fisherman.
The soft shell only stay soft for about hours, if that.
But when frozen (a standard house refrigerator would work) they do not grow.
To clean a soft crab all you do is cut off the face with scissors and take out the lungs.
Soft crabs are fried on a home stove. Take a pan, put 1/2 a stick of butter in it. then have a bowl filled with flower and old bay.
throw the crab in the bowl.
Put a quarter spoonfull of viggie oil in the pan to prevent the butter from burning.
Keep the crab in there until the bottom is a golden brown. Then flip it and wait until the top part it done as well. Then you eat the ENTIRE CRAB that is left. All the shells and everything.

Hard crab:
Basically you just take a bunch of them and steam them. When eating them you just crack open the shells and eat the meat inside. Only things not eaten is:
Shell
Lungs (Devils meat)
organs

you can eat the organs but i do not.

Hope this helps.
-Nick

very important- they must be steamed ! the steaming solution in my book is the most important,crabs or shell on shrimp. solutuion consists of 2 budweisers , then fill one bud bottle half way up with apple cider vinneger and dump it in , and one bottle full of water - completely cover the crabs with old bay and rock salt and shrimp with old bay only then steam . while steaming , crabs and shrimp are done as soon as they turn pink -**very important not to over cook** drink alot of beer while eating.

my advice to you mod is to try and get blues then try others.

Beer = most important part.

Blues are the only food I eat until myhands are too damaged to continue. I never get full, because picking them takes time...glorious, sweet, fluffy white time. When I am done my hands look like I was sorting razor blades by the fistful.... Oh and beer/alcohol is cause of and solution to all of lifes problems.

true.dat.

I certainly like to try sometime. I'll not find them where I live, it just would not make sense, we have snow crab local right here thus the cost is so much less then it would cost to import blue crab, so no one imports it. But I'll keep my eyes open on any vacations I'm on in those areas and try to make a point of trying that out.

Of course, the real specialty where I'm at is the Atlantic lobster, supposed to be best in the world. And while it still isn't cheap, it's cheaper than it is in a lot of other places for sure, because it's local again.

Maybe we all need to pack some local seafood in some coolers and meet in the middle of NA sometime. New York of something!

Ok, I have to say this or I will be thrown out of the Fryers Club...

MOD
you can pick up a case of crabs just about anywhere....


whew. that had to be said.

Thanks Genocide!!

I think Im only going to stay there long enough to find a comparable job that i can switch over to. Either way, it's all good, so long as my wife and kids are with me, and I can play a little COD MOB at the end of the day!!



I'll take a blue claw over a king any day!

Man oh man, y'all have got me in the mood for some Tony's Seafood of Baton Rouge !!



Just go to their link and look at the menu man!! MMMMMMmmmmm, crawfish boudin!!

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BAAAAARUMPBABUMP!!!!!!!!!

@ flatliner--
BAHAHAHHA

@ Keystone--
I can't really relate to you in that situation seeing as im 15. But best of luck to you man.
-Nick

MOD nc is going to find out if they can be shipped so maybe youll try and order from there too .



i remember when i lived in oc maryland ,we used to go to a place called watermans rest outside oc on route 50 . i was tending bar and all our staff would take off wedsdays and once a month like 25 of us would go, it was all the blue crabs ,shrimp ,corn on the cob and fried chicken for $21.95 , they didnt have a liquor license but you could bring your own beer and they would put big buckets of ice at the ends of the table,talk about a day off! we would eat and drink for about 4 hours .

then to the angler for 50 cent drafts and mr ducks for duck calls .

dude,
after 4 hours of beer and crabs, you were your own duck call...(flatulance reference)

Alrighty just got off work after runnin the crab up to edgemere. We did decent today, 7 1's 5 female and 3 lights.

I talked to Cpt Jimmy and he doesn't mess with shipping crab from around the place, but he did tell me that what most people do is same day Fed-ex delivery. It's gonna cost you though.
-Nick