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How We Crab

The boats we use are not the little 10 foot rowboats you may remember from growing up.  We use traditional Maryland style skiffs that are 24 ft. long and 8 ft. wide.

On a Fun Time Crabbing trip, we use topless traps.  And we use them a little differently than you may have used crab traps in the past.

You will drop the baskets connected to a buoy every 100 feet or so. We will use 20 to 30 of these. By the time we drop the last one, we motor back and we pull them up, collect our crabs, re-bait them and drop them. No standing around on the Fun Time Crabbing trips. Not when there are crabs to be caught.

If we are having one of those times when the crabs are just everywhere, we also can hand-line. You have to move slow and keep quiet. If you are bringing kids, you already know how that goes – Burger King for dinner, because there won’t be crabs.

For serious crabbers with good hand-eye coordination, we can trot line. To do this baits are tied on a line about 4 feet apart that runs for several hundred feet. The line is pulled up slowly over a roller at the back of the boat. You have to net the crabs at the front before they realize that the line is getting close to the surface. This type of crabbing is limited by the time of day and tide we would experience on your trip. If you have not done this before, it is a good diet plan, ‘cause you won’t have anything to eat for dinner.

For the most hardcore crabbers we offer a unique experience – a snorkel mask and a glove. Just kidding.

Seriously, sometimes the crabbing really becomes secondary to the experience and we are mindful of that. It seems that when you hand a crab to an 6 year old wearing padded gloves, nobody seems to care about catching more, just learning about the one they are holding. We get it. Usually, Dad falls asleep in the sun, Mom gets gung-ho about the crabbing and their little girl usually wants to drive the boat.

At the end of the trip, we also show you the quickest way to clean your Fun Time Crabbing crabs and will even pitch in and help out if there is time before the next trip. We can do a little crab biology lesson for the curious ones. And you can even borrow a steamer that connects to gas grill propane tank if you need one. Just please make arrangements to bring it back!

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