06-08-2007, 05:24 PM
Anyone who lives in or around Maryland or grew up in this area knows all about Blue Crabs and Old Bay. The tastiest treat native to these parts.
I attempted last weekend for the first time to catch Crab from my Kayak. The Idea was to rig up 16 box traps and drop them in an area I know to produce crabs.
I found out the hard way that this was not as simple as I had imagined.
I attached the 16 assembled traps to the back of my kayak. 8 to each clip attached to the back gear area of my Ocean Kayak Drifter and paddled out to my spot.
I found out all too late that getting the traps rigged to the kayak on dryland was ALLOT easier then detaching them on the water. That was my first mistake. The second came when one of my snaps broke and 8 of my traps went down to the murky depths with no floats attached [pirate]
Then a further 2 more slipped out of my hands and into the drink while I was trying to rig the floats. Allot of time wasted and 10 traps in the drink later I managed to get 6 of them in the water for crabbing. At this point I was allready in a terrible mood from the wasted money thanks to my lack of forsight on the matter.
The next 2 hours were spent figuring out how best to drop and retrieve traps on the go. LOTS of trial and error there.
All in all I ended up catching just 1 keeper crab before I was so exausted and ticked off that I decided to pack it in and paddle home.
1 stinkin crab for all that!!!
I kept my 1 stinkin crab... took him home... cooked him and ate him.
Damned if I was gonna walk away from that travesty empty handed.
It's not the loosing traps or the skimpy catch that upset me about this trip. It's the fact that had I taken more time to think it through I could have done allot better and not wasted traps.
I have since put more thought into this concept and have designed a very simple system to solve all the issues I ran into on the water.
My worst problem was limited space for working with and storing the Foxy Mate traps on the Kayak. I found a simple $3 solution for that.
I'm lucky enough that I live just 5 miles from a BassPro Outdoor World Superstore [
]. I went there and found a pair of strong bamboo sectioned fishing poles. I'm putting the bottom sections in my rod holders on the kayak and putting the traps out on the rods. That way everything is balanced and out of the way. I'm going to pre-string and bait them before going out this time as well to save the headache on the water.
I'm going to be making my second attempt tomorrow morning. I'll post Pics and maybe some video over the weekend and let yall know how it goes.
[signature]
I attempted last weekend for the first time to catch Crab from my Kayak. The Idea was to rig up 16 box traps and drop them in an area I know to produce crabs.
I found out the hard way that this was not as simple as I had imagined.
I attached the 16 assembled traps to the back of my kayak. 8 to each clip attached to the back gear area of my Ocean Kayak Drifter and paddled out to my spot.
I found out all too late that getting the traps rigged to the kayak on dryland was ALLOT easier then detaching them on the water. That was my first mistake. The second came when one of my snaps broke and 8 of my traps went down to the murky depths with no floats attached [pirate]
Then a further 2 more slipped out of my hands and into the drink while I was trying to rig the floats. Allot of time wasted and 10 traps in the drink later I managed to get 6 of them in the water for crabbing. At this point I was allready in a terrible mood from the wasted money thanks to my lack of forsight on the matter.
The next 2 hours were spent figuring out how best to drop and retrieve traps on the go. LOTS of trial and error there.
All in all I ended up catching just 1 keeper crab before I was so exausted and ticked off that I decided to pack it in and paddle home.
1 stinkin crab for all that!!!
I kept my 1 stinkin crab... took him home... cooked him and ate him.
Damned if I was gonna walk away from that travesty empty handed.
It's not the loosing traps or the skimpy catch that upset me about this trip. It's the fact that had I taken more time to think it through I could have done allot better and not wasted traps.
I have since put more thought into this concept and have designed a very simple system to solve all the issues I ran into on the water.
My worst problem was limited space for working with and storing the Foxy Mate traps on the Kayak. I found a simple $3 solution for that.
I'm lucky enough that I live just 5 miles from a BassPro Outdoor World Superstore [
]. I went there and found a pair of strong bamboo sectioned fishing poles. I'm putting the bottom sections in my rod holders on the kayak and putting the traps out on the rods. That way everything is balanced and out of the way. I'm going to pre-string and bait them before going out this time as well to save the headache on the water. I'm going to be making my second attempt tomorrow morning. I'll post Pics and maybe some video over the weekend and let yall know how it goes.
[signature]