Oh the Darkness

[fisheyed]

This weekend we finally seemed to get into the crabs. Some great first runs. We did notice however that basically every crab looked like it was coming right out of the mud. Do you think these crabs buried during all the hot weather and the rains last week brought them back out or do you think they were just somewhere else and we lucked into them finally. All crabs were on the smaller side but rock hard.

[redbeard]

if you judged their hardness on their looks you may be surprized to find that some were not reaaly hard. ive been catchin the crabs your speaking of for about 4 weeks, some acually had lines on their shells where thy were in the bottom or mud. i posted about this in a previous thread hear but no one else replyed that they had seen the same. what river were you in? some of these that i've cuaght were papershells when you sqeeze the tips but latlythey've been better. i caught 3 1/2 bu sat. and could've catch more.

[fisheyed]

These were rock hard packed with meat. Also very good tasting, little sweet unlike some hard crabs that can almost be "tough"

[Harry Hood]

I found that dirty crabs are usually getting ready to shed. Dirty crabs will be heavier than clean crabs. Cleaner crabs or crabs with bright white bottom shells have recently upgrade to a their larger shell and have not yet had time for the meat to grow to the size of the shell.


Edit:

When I say dirty, I don't just mean mud and funk on the shells (which can be an indicator if caked on) but I am talking about stained shells. Kinda like coffee stains in a white coffee mug.