how to go crabbing

Harry and Jack took me crabbing at the quay yesterday. I will admit that I have been looking forward to going crabbing since they told me about it weeks ago. I will admit I had a slight obsession with it as something that I've never done before and something that I wasn't sure I would ever have the opportunity to do again. There are a few things needed prior to the expedition.

1. a bucket
2. string
3. a weight
4. a small netted bag
5. this is the most important...bacon

So with all these tools of the trade in tow we headed down to the quay. Apparently bacon is the bait of choice. Everyone on the dock had some. In all honesty I would never even begin to be able to guess what sort of bait would be needed so bacon seemed logical to me. OK to start, fill the bucket half way up with water from the sea, second put a bit of bacon in the netted bag that has the weight attached to it and make sure it all is firmly attached to the string. Lower the bag in the water just off the dock. Make sure it settles into the seaweed, that is where the crabs like to hid. Finally wait. The waiting part is the hard part. We were sitting on the concrete quay and I didn't bring anything to sit on or anything to hold my attention unless you count making sure the boys didn't fall in.

After waiting for what was probably only about 5 minutes or so Harry pulled up the string and there was a crab attached to the bag! We didn't have the bucket handy so as soon as we got the crab up to the quay he let go of the bag and scampered to the edge and jumped back in. No worries though, we got back to the task and soon we caught another crab and this time we managed to get it into the bucket. It was quite satisfying to have caught a crab. We poked around some more and ended up catching a second crab. Like with the first we missed the bucket but I decided I was going to go after it. I managed to pick it up while avoiding the claws and put it in the bucket. By now Jack had already given up and gone back to the cottage so Harry and I took the cabs back to show him and then we returned them to whence they came.

It was quite a fun adventure. I think next time I will bring something to sit on as well as a book or something to do while I wait for the crabs to take the bait!