Peeler crab3/19/2023 But medium size soft shells like this usually bring $3 each. A bushel of medium size hard crabs may bring a crabber $30 for about 90 crabs. The payoff to all his prep work: a blue crab almost ready to molt, to shed its hard shell and start over again with a new, softer shell that will take days to harden up. Bank trapping is currently allowed only in Somerset County, one of the least populated counties in Maryland, and along part of Eastern Neck Island, a sanctuary for migratory birds. They follow a form of crab catching not found any more along more populated rivers where homeowners prefer their water views empty of any old-time fishing gear. "I make the same stops, the same place everyday."īank trappers like Barnette are a dwindling tribe. They wait patiently for Barnette to show up and empty his traps of crabs and flip them any fish he may find there. He keeps turtles out so they won't eat his crabs before he unloads them.įish often show up in Barnettes' traps, making them a popular hang out for herons and ospreys and eagles. That doesn't happen with Barnette's traps, thanks to a TED, a turtle exclusion device he uses. After the "leader" and the "heart" comes the trap itself, a wire cage standing four feet wide and five feet high, tall enough to keep the top out of the water at mean high tide and give breathing room to any turtles that might wander in. Each of his almost-complete bank traps requires 15 poles, a lot of “leader” panels and a sturdy “heart.” In this long afternoon he managed to set up four of these bank trap structures, the last of the 30 bank traps he will work this season.īank traps are sometimes called "peeler pounds" because their design resembles traditional pound nets used for catching finfish. The bank trapper was now prepped for the peeler runs of May, and they are often the largest of the season. A motor-driven water pump helps him blast holes deep enough to anchor his poles in the river bottom. To ease the grunt work he has some technology Native Americans never had. To hold his "heart" in place, Barnette has to sink a pole at each corner. As blue crabs get ready to molt, they seek shelter along the shore, only to run into the wire panels which “lead” them away from the shore.Īt the end of the “leader,” peeler crabs will find themselves entering a structure called the “heart.” ![]() The technique, he said, is similar to the fishing weirs once used along this river by Native Americans of the Wicomico chiefdom.Īs the poles and panels reach out from the shore, they create “the leader” for the bank trap. He had to drive each pole deep enough to withstand winds and storm waves for the next seven months.īetween the poles Barnette installed wire panels, tying each one in place and creating a flow-through barrier. There's a lot grunt work in his peeler prep. As he worked he had to pick his way among old tree stumps hidden underwater along river bottom that was once hard land before sea level rise and erosion pushed back the shoreline. This April he began hauling those poles out of the marsh and planting them in the shallows along the river. That’s especially true for the handful of watermen who set up bank traps designed to catch peelers, hard crabs that are getting ready to molt, to shed their shells and morph, for a brief period, into soft crabs.įor John Barnette this year’s crabbing season began last fall when he left stacks of poles sticking up in 30 different spots along the marshlands that line the south side of the lower Wicomico River. On the Bay: Chesapeake Quarterly's BlogĬrabbers in Maryland usually start working weeks before the blue crabs start moving out of the mud where they overwinter.Fellowship Experiences: A Students' Blog.
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