![]() The wholesalers, in turn, will sell the crabs to restaurants, where they’ll soon appear on dining tables as crunchy, fried soft shell crabs. He’ll then sell the catch to wholesalers at a price of $24 a dozen for the jumbos, up from $9 a dozen 15 years ago. On a good day, the veteran waterman will catch two bushels of peelers with his 17 traps. He leaves the traps along the shallow edges of creeks, where peelers like to hide. Instead, he builds peeler traps himself, using wire leader and a two-by-three-foot box. Barrack doesn’t use conventional crab pots to catch peelers, which are crabs ready to shed their hard shells as part of the molting process. every morning, as the sun begins its ascent, Edwin “Junior” Barrack climbs in his 14-foot skiff and sets out from the village of Morattico, on the Rappahannock River, to haul in some blue “peeler” crabs. I only had 2 or 3 crabs die on me over the 6 weeks and the rest eventually peeled.At 6:00 a.m. Over the 6 weeks I used less than two of the 4 pint milk containers worth of seawater.Įvery time I removed crabs to freeze I redistributed the others so they were evenly distributed among the tubs. I held the lid on the tub to drain the small amount of seawater out every day and replaced it with another 5 to 8 mm depth. I checked them every day and any that were popping I took out, wrapped in clingfilm and froze immediately. I pressed the lids on properly only about half way around so they weren't air tight. I put 4 or 5 crabs in each tub with seaweed covering them and about 5 to 8 mm depth of sea water so they were kept moist but could breathe air. I filled a few 4 pint milk bottles up with sea water while I was there and collected some seaweed. So I took the unused ones home to see if they would peel later, if I could keep them alive, as an experiment as I had not done this before. I bought about 30 off him and disappointingly only around a third were ready and the rest were not. Last year because Wales was shut, one of the first sessions I had was up Fleetwood trying for smoothies and I sourced some crab from a local peeler dealer. I've kept crabs I've bought alive for 6 weeks in the fridge until they've peeled, in small plastic tubs like you get from the Chinese. I have the same attitude to bait digging, lol. Definitely not for the crab tile thing but even searching for them in the wild is pretty time consuming and no guarantee I’ll get much.Ĭurrently got 120 in the freezer at 60p a crab which I’m happy to pay to save myself the hassle. Would need to replace the seawater every day or two, I believe. It’s quite a chore checking them every tide and cleaning them out regularly though (if they’re clogged with mud and sand, the crabs won’t use them).Īlso worth remembering that not every peeler you find will be ready to ‘pop’, it might take a few days, so people serious about it keep them at home in an aerated (sp?) tank and ‘bring them on’ until ready to use or freeze. ![]() Some places have bylaws now forbidding or controlling their placement though. In some areas especially estuaries, people place ‘crab tiles’ ie bits of guttering or similar, and make their own crab traps. Then it provides suitable shelter for the next animals to come along. The weed not as important if the tide will move it back but if you turn a rock, try and put it back roughly as it was, without squashing anything else under there. The fighty ones aren’t usually peeling.īut you may well find a fighty male carrying a female peeler underneath them.ĭo try and replace things as you find them though. If you’ve got any areas with rocks covered with bladder wrack or similar weed that you can just turn over, that’s a good spot to hunt for them.Īs you say, the peelers are likely to be more docile.
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