Message from the Cap’n — Soft Crabs Back in Season
The Cap’n
Message from the Cap’n is a compilation of fishing advice, waterman and weather insights, Chesapeake lore, and ordinary malarkey from the folks who keep their feet wet in the Potomac and St. Mary’s rivers.
From the Interpretive Buoy System: The lower Potomac water temperature was 69 degrees this mid-May and the salinity just a tad below 15 parts per unit.
Soft crabs are in season now in the Chesapeake
(And here the HuffPost tells “the truth about what soft crabs REALLY are.“)
As the bay water temperature rises in the spring above 60 degrees Fahrenheit, the Chesapeake Bay blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) shed their shells in their growth process.
Our first “run” of soft crabs in the Lower Potomac consists of mostly males because they overwintered here. The male crabs seek fresher water in the summertime than the female and migrate toward our headwaters where the water is fresher.
As they migrate back down the rivers and bays, they bury in the mud when the water temperature falls to 50 degrees Fahrenheit and lower.
In its growth process the blue crab will shed its shell about 15 to 18 times and lives about three years. Crabs literally “get too big for their britches” and shed as their process of growth.
How to tell when a crab is going to shed its shell
Anyone enjoying crabs around the Chesapeake Bay should be able to tell when a crab is getting ready to shed (molt). Keep in mind that there are many ways to tell when the process will occur. Here is my simple way: Crabs have walking legs and a swimming fin on each side of their body.
The sign that a crab is getting ready to shed is located on the swimming fin in the joint just above the last circular flipper. It looks like a fish hook.
Let me tell you in another way, starting with the basics first:
- Males sport a rocket ship, blue on the claws
- Females the Capitol dome & red fingertips.
- They both have legs with which they crawl,
- And swimming fins to propel it all.
- When they are young, they grow like hell
- But are contained inside a hard shell.
- And then when they’re really fat inside
- They split their shell in which they reside
- Rules for shedding a crab are these:
- Red sign on the flipper,
- they’ll crawl out for dinner,
- Pink sign on the flippers,
- the delay will be days.
- No sign on the flipper,
- chuck it as they’ll eat your dinner.
- In shedding they emerge really soft
- needing be cleaned to remove the sand.
- Scissors for this is a great plan.
- After which
- They’re ready for the frying pan
- They’re soft for about four hours
- Then become a paper shell
- By taking limestone out of the water,
- smoothing the wrinkles on the top.
- In 30 days it sheds again
- And cycles many times before life’s end.
- Blue crabs only live three years,
- if lucky enough not to be eaten by its peers
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