With the noted exception of messing about in boats, few things are as fun as catching crabs. Eating them does come awfully close, though. And while I still own a trotline, today my gear of choice is usually 10 snap pots.
Even scaled down, I manage to do OK. In the days leading up to this Father’s Day weekend, the handful of watermen I pinged report crabbing has been slow but improving and expect an uptick in catches next week. A friend who regularly crabs the Eastern Shore waters says about the same, and adds it can be productive for those who put in the time.
Crabs remind me of some father-son relationships: prickly and beautiful all at once. Mine was similarly complicated, especially when I was younger. I’ve previous mentioned that Bruce Springsteen’s lead-in narrative to the song “The River” on his epochal live album tells how he and his dad used to “go at it over just about everything.
” Man, can I relate. A combination of my father mellowing and me maturing helped even out the rough patches in the last decade or so prior to his death. Who can predict what lies ahead? None of us.
And during those final years we had some good times fishing and eating crabs. My dad could care less about chasing big fish. Run-and-gun? Hard pass.
He especially liked catching spot and frying them up with eggs in a cast iron skillet. He also loved crabs, and his favorites were what he’d call “Magothy Middles” — fat-bellied beauties just barely legal. And he liked to check p.
