Went crabbing today with one of my aunt's friends and Alex, a Russian guy that lives upstairs that works for my aunt for free rent. We took him along because he's never seen a crab. On Sunday, my cousin agreed to come crabbing with us, but she had a last minute "stomachache".
We arrived at the crabbing spot (A new spot, I've never been there before. They call it "the bridge") with all our stuff, chicken legs, traps, string, stakes, beach chairs and a cooler full of drinks and watermelon........ WE FORGOT TO BRING NETS! Sooooo we set up the traps and threw them in, since we didn't need nets for those. We got a lot of little ones. Alex got a big one. My aunt left for about an hour to go to CVS to buy something for my cousin's stomach and also to get the nets. She forgot her house keys, but she peeked in the window to see my cousin on WoW. Predictable. I tied the rest of the chicken onto the strings on the stakes.
Anyway, my aunt came back with the nets and we started wading into the tall grass (pokemon, much?). Then we stabbed the wet mud with our stakes. We unraveled the string and threw the chicken in. The trick to crabbing is I guess.... "string feel" haha. You need to wait until the string is tugging (its just like fishing). Then you start to reel it in slowly, and if you feel like the chicken feels heavier, then you probably have something on the other end. If you have something that's pulling REALLY hard, you probably got a rock lol. If you have something that randomly pulls REALLY hard on and off, you might have an eel. You need something like an underwater butterfly net for that. We didn't have one of those. If you have something that pulls lightly on and off, then you have a crab, my friend! So you need to pull it in really slow, and eventually it will come into view under the water, as you pull it closer, you will start to see the crab. Try to gauge the depth of the chicken by the color of it, it will ALWAYS look closer than it really is! Wait until the chicken changes from a murky gray/green to a white color, and then you're good to go. Be swift with the net, and dip lower than you think you need to. Water depth is a tricky bitch. With enough luck and patience, you will get some crabs! Usually we separate the big ones and little ones, and we throw the little ones back in at the end of the day, so we don't keep catching the little ones. We also throw the mommies back in. You can tell because they'll have eggs stuck to their underside. You can tell gender from the bottom of the crab. There will be a sort of flap that looks like either a half circle or a triangle. If it's a big half-circle with a little triangle on it, then it's a girl. If it's a triangle, it's a boy. Don't ask me how they have sex, I don't know. YouTube it. Anyway, here's a picture of both, see if you can tell the difference!
The top is the male and the bottom is the female. I hope you got it right.
After we got home, my aunt RIPPED their claws off with pliers and my cousin and I set off to clean them with toothbrushes. Then I took a shower because I was really muddy from wading around in the tall grass looking for pokemon (large crabs). We invited Alex down for some crab. He looked a little uncomfortable eating a traditional meal in a Chinese household but he did well. He used chopsticks and thanked us for the meal.
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