Local blue crabs are abundant

Blue crabs are one of the nastiest, most ill-tempered and mean-spirited organisms on the planet. Loose in the bottom of a boat, a 5-ounce blue crab can hold a grown man at bay. Pound-for-pound, they make a great white shark seem like a choir boy. If they grew to a couple hundred pounds, you wouldn't be able to safely play in the water during the summer, because they would be plucking people off the decks of boats with their front claws. A mature, hard-shelled male crab has powerful pincer-like claws that can easily rip and cut skin. I have many permanent scars on my hands to prove this point. Blue crabs are, in my opinion, the best-eating critter in the sea and my absolute favorite meal served with fresh corn and a salad. They're well worth all the pain and bloodletting over the years.

• Too tempting I've passed up shots at more deer than I've tagged, released trophy-class stripers, freshwater bass, pike, muskellunge, even fluke up to four or five pounds, but never have -- and never will -- release a single legal-sized blue crab. They are simply too tasty.
• During the mid 1990s, when my son, Jared, was just growing big enough to handle a crab net with ease. Three of us were in a small boat, armed with powerful spot lights and long-handled crab nets on a serious, nighttime crab hunt.
• The early part of that decade had brought with it winters that started early and ended late, with numerous heavy snow storms. It's a combination of conditions that can literally wipe out most of our local blue crab population as they have during the first few years of this decade. That year, there were a few local survivors around to catch and, as always, late-summer and early fall brought a migration of blue crabs into the area from the south. If these transients and their offspring survive the winter, they provide seed for the recovery of our local populations, which will peak two seasons later.
• That year, both local and migratory crabs had been around for two seasons, so blue crabs were abundant throughout the region. Because there were mature survivors in the population, there was a higher-than-usual number of giant finger-crushers around the area.
• As in any sort of hunting and fishing, catching big ones is icing on the cake of success. That particular trip in the '90s had a great deal of frosting on it in the form of numerous seven-inch plus crabs, a couple of more than eight inches and a chance to net the largest blue crab I've ever seen. During that trip, my son, Jared, was perfecting his crab-netting technique, so he was initially relegated to practicing on the small ones until his catch-per-attempt ratio was close to perfect. After we had a good supply of keepers in our pails, he was allowed to catch some of the bigger crabs to build his skills and confidence. In fact, that night he caught his largest trophy-sized blue crab -- an 1 1/2-incher. Shortly before he caught that monster blue-clawed male, I missed one that made it look small.
• Jared has always had hunter's eyes, which means he's a natural at spotting things in the wild. For this reason, he was given his own spotlight long before he could actively participate with a crab net. It was fun and exciting for him, because he was a good spotter and therefore always contributed to our overall effort. I could tell by the tone of his voice when he excitedly went "Whoooh!," as he was scanning the water for the telltale white underside.
• Big catch: I really couldn't believe my eyes. This crab was inches wider than any I'd ever encountered including my personal record, an incredible 91¼4 -inch behemoth that came from the same area four or five years before Jared was born. I use a wooden-handled crab net with a heavy metal frame that is about 12-13 inches across at its widest point. This crab, sitting with its elbow's out, was at least an inch wider than the net on each side. I knew it wouldn't fit into the net from any angle, so I tried to half scoop and half flip it into the boat. Bad plan.
• I lifted the net with a hard, fast-raking swoop, while shaking it the entire time in an effort to entangle the crabs points or claws in the mesh. Initially, the water pressure held it and balanced across the net frame. As it cleared the surface of the water, the crab simply spread its claws, slipped off the frame, bounced off the side of the boat and was gone. I'm still ticked off about losing that one. It had to be at least 10 inches across its points.
• Crabs are a short-lived species that lasts only about 18 to 28 months, so a monster like that missed 10-incher was either a pituitary giant or it had an extra molt or two of growing. Crabs grow rapidly during the summer, shedding their shells every few weeks throughout the growing season. Those poker chip-sized crabs that were so abundant in the Thames River late last fall are the 5-inch keepers people are catching right now. There apparently was a recent molt, because most of the crabs I caught last week were just barely keepers and many were soft or paper shells. The biggest was not even 6 inches.
• A crab's shell is essentially like a kid wearing a snowsuit with longjohns underneath. Think of the longjohns as an internal layer of skin that will eventually become a new shell. As crabs grow (lobster and insects go through the same process) they fill their shell with muscle and internal organs like a kid outgrowing his or her clothes.
• When they reach the bursting point, a hormone is released that causes the shell to split along its back edge and the crab -- now soft and helpless in its longjohns -- literally pulls itself out of its old shell and finds a safe place to hide. During this period, crabs are vulnerable to predation from about anything that can get to them. It is also when hard-shelled males mate with soft-shelled females. After shedding its old shell, the crab then pumps up its soft flexible outer skin by filling itself with water. This new shell, which is equivalent to those longjohns noted earlier, is about 20 percent larger in order to make room for new muscle growth.
• There are a good number of crabs present that apparently survived last winter. Early signs indicated that they had not made it through the winter. Bear in mind that in additional to these local crabs continuing to grow sometime soon, their numbers will be boosted by an influx of migratory crabs from out south. The end result will be excellent crabbing throughout the fall. (Bob Sampson)