Choose Your Own Adventure — Crabbing

By Milledge Webb

It took me three days to catch crabs in Saint Augustine. Get your minds out of the gutter. Blue Crabs, the kind they make those crab cakes you like so much out of, not the ones you supposedly caught in a truck stop restroom. They teem beneath the briny water that laps around the edges of our fair city. Blue Crabs are basically bottom dwelling water spiders that eat the stuff that coats the bottom of the ocean. They are hard to catch, harder to extract the meat out of and basically much more trouble than they are worth.

But they taste so damn good.

Back in the ye olde Nineteen-Eighties, I spent a lot of time crabbing. I was one of those little white-trash kids with the rat-tail and the Kool-Aid moustache, the kind you see robbing gumball machines down at the Piggly-Wiggly. The summer in South Carolina is long and hot and though ripping off the Pig and lighting firecrackers took up most of my time, my Mama had ways to keep me gainfully employed. Crabbing is a time consuming exercise that requires little skill and about $1.49 worth of equipment.

Mama walked me down the hot, splintery boards of our dock, a five-gallon bucket in one hand, my sticky little meat hook in the other. “I want you to catch some crabs, Milledge, at least a dozen of ‘em.”

The sun steamed the mud under the dock and I tossed the bait down into Factory Creek. Crabbing rigs are pretty simple. About 15 yards of clothesline wrapped around a stick with a lead sinker tied on the end. The bait is usually whatever part of the chicken even French people won’t eat, also tied to the end of the string. Then you toss that bad boy in the agua and wait. And wait. The trick is to do it real slow, and the crab will be so into the chicken parts, he won’t let go. Then you dip a net under him and slap him into the bucket. I crabbed a lot that summer, until the folks shipped me off to 4-H camp.

STUFF YOU NEED TO KNOW 

Where: Anywhere the water hits the sand with a muddy bottom, but favorites are the Guana Preserve lagoon, The Salt Run/Lighthouse Pier, and the seawall along Water Street.

Gear: This ain’t high-tech: Get some string (clothesline, twine, shoestrings tied together), a heavy lead fishing weight, chicken (go to Winn-Dixie and ask the butcher for backs. They are cheaper mac and cheese, and he might just give them to you). Find a good stick to wrap the string around. Next, a Dip Net, these are available at all the local tackle shops, it looks like a net on the end of a broom handle, and it pretty much is. Before you buy one hit up your neighbor, the one with the boat, he probably has one you can borrow. And a 5- gallon bucket.

Cash: Less than going to the movies.

Top Secret: Chicks dig guys who can catch things, guys dig chicks who aren’t afraid to handle raw chicken.

Twenty years later, I am sitting on the Salt Run Pier with a Blonde Bombshell and a Rock n’Roll photographer, playing with raw chicken. The Blonde cracks a Corona, the Photographer takes pictures of her looking bored. I bait the lines and wait. In the meantime, I amuse them with my witty banter and tales of adventure. The Blonde opens another beer. We check and re-check and the crabs must have a problem with my technique. I have all the right stuff; I even bought the fancy drop-net style crab lines.

After an hour of no action, the Blonde bailed. The Photographer and I relocated to the edge of the Castillo and tried again. We sat and talked about stuff, the Photographer and I. We talked about politics and sea turtles and white reggae musicians. Somewhere between Haile Selassie and the Department of Veterans affairs, the crabs had not shown up. We walked away from the sea wall, skunked but not defeated.

After that, I crabbed alone. I put baits out the way my Mama taught me, just a string and a sinker. I ranged from the edge of the Santa Maria restaurant back to the Salt Run Pier, and I knew that I would eventually have to catch something. By the end of day two, I was beginning to doubt myself and my ability to hang chicken parts in the water on a piece of clothesline. When I thought all hope was lost, I tugged my last line out of the water and there, clinging to the ragged grey piece of chicken back, was the saddest, sorriest little blue crab I have ever seen. But he gave me hope. The sun dipped down behind the Vilano Bridge and I pressed on.

I don’t know if the tide turned or the crabs felt sorry for me, but I caught seven in the next three hours. Not exactly record-breaking, but definitely soul-satisfying. I carried my bucket up the pier toward the truck, the crabs snapping in the bottom. (All you PETA types stop reading here and go build a yurt or something) When you cook blue crabs they need to be boiled alive. Sorry, I know it sounds mean, but did I mention how damn good they taste?