There's a reason that fresh, picked crab costs over $30 a pound. Catching them is not easy, nor is keeping them alive. Then there's the cooking and picking. Very labor intensive with lots of "crab parts" left over.
Below is a picture of me on the way out to drop two crab pots in a nearby bay. The pots are collapsible, so they can be transported more easily. Along with each pot is a bait box, to keep the crab from stealing the bait by dragging it out of the pot. I usually use cut-up chicken (keeping the breasts for cooking), salmon parts, and a can of cheap cat food. The cat food is for "back-up". When the good bait is gone, the cat food can still leaks food particles into the water, continuing to attract the crabs. The crabs have ravenous appetites, and little is left in the traps when pulled in the next day.
When I reach water about 80 ft deep, the traps are tossed overboard, with a leaded 100 ft line attached to a buoy. The traps sit on the bottom, each side having a little swinging door that shuts by gravity when a crab enters. Like a roach motel - they check in but don't check out!
Once the pots are set, I return to the dock. The pots can soak for a few hours to a few days before checking. I usually check on them daily. Back at the dock there are several other ways to crab fish. I use a ring, baited with some chicken and lower it to the bottom off of the edge of the dock. Checking them every 1/2 hour usually yields a few crabs. Those caught by the dock are Red Crab - smaller than the Dungeness Crab caught by the pots in deeper water.
Another fun activity on the dock is to use a Crab Hawk - a small trap attached to a fishing pole. The chicken is placed in the middle, and the trap is heaved out like a giant fishing lure. It goes out about 50 to 100 ft. from the dock. Checked every ten minutes, it yields a surprising number of crabs.
Below is a denizen of the deep... a starfish. They try to hog the bait by lying on top of it. Ugly suckers. That's where the big, black rubber gloves come in handy.
Here are the two crab pots that I pulled in today. A very nice catch. Only male Dungeness crabs can be kept, meaning I have to throw back at least 1/2 the catch. Then only those males with a 6 1/4" shell can be kept. More thrown back. Today I was able to keep six - which is considered a good catch.
Here's pot #2...
I use the thick black industrial rubber gloves to handle and clean the crabs, making me look like Dr. Strangelove to bystanders. The crabs are extremely nasty, and have inflicted injury even through the gloves. These crabs don't live to get big by being nice ! I won't go into detail about the cleaning process. Needless to say it's messy. Luckily we have a nice fish cleaning station at the park, which makes the job easier. A little secret I discovered is to put the live crabs on ice for a while, which makes their reactions slower. Moving quickly, I can have one cleaned before he knows what's happening.
We discovered a turkey frying pot with burner on sale in town. It turned-out to be a perfect crab cooking rig. At first I was filling the pot 1/2 way with water and boiling the crabs. Works well but uses a lot of propane! One of the local crab specialists in the park suggested just putting about an inch of water in the pot, with a steamer device on the bottom. Then pile the crab in. The steam in the large pot cooks them just as well, with little propane needed.
Next is the best part - eating them. Lots of cracking and picking is required. I like to accumulate all of the picked pieces in a dish of melted butter. Heaven !!
Mimi has developed a system to preserve the left-over crab. She places the pieces in small plastic containers, covered, and flash freezes them. Then they are removed from the container and vacuum sealed, being returned to the freezer. We're going to try some recipes with the frozen crab to see how they taste, soon.
After going through the whole catching and cleaning process, I understand why that little packet of crab is sooo expensive in the store.
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