Crabbin' with Cap'n Dave

[Brian M]

My wife and I had the privilege of going out to pull the crab pots with our very own homerdave on Friday. Good stuff! We drove down to Homer and spent the afternoon with BucknRut, then spent the next morning on the water with Dave and a few others. I was mostly on child duty so that my wife could get the up-close view. I felt a little bad not helping to hoist the pot over the side, but Dave had some other help and my wife had always wanted to go crabbing, so I did my fatherly/husbandly duty.

Here is the pot coming aboard after soaking for ~48 hours.



As you can tell, my boy is taking an early interest in aquatic life...or is that seafood?





There were 11 keepers - here is a portion of the bounty.

[Brian M]

My wife got the lesson from Captain Dave on how to clean the crab, and got right to it after some initial silliness.



Knocking the head against "something hard" to remove the top part of the shell.





And the final product.... I must say that I have never tasted finer crab. I've had fresh king crab caught in the summer, but this was the sweetest, most succulent crab that I've ever eaten. I'm sure the experience had something to do with it, but dang...that was some good eating. Thanks to Dave for the awesome day and great meal. Now I just need to find some way to get my wife to love me more than she loves crab.

[jrogers]

Looks like fun Brian, thanks for sharing. Can you go into more details on the cleaning/processing part of this? I am going to give this a try in southeast this spring, ang at this point I don't have a clear understanding about how you do the equivalent of filleting them (see, I don't even know what it is called!).

Jim

[TruBluTex]

Dude...I'm envious! The only crabbin' I've ever done was for some Dungeness in Washington state years ago and it was pretty much a snap. Just head out on a pier, toss out the trap w/ some chicken, let it set for a bit, and then reel it in.

I'm happy for y'all bringing in a nice catch and snackin' on some of the best crab God created for us to eat!

[DMan]

AWESOME!! Thanks for sharing!

[icb12]

Looks like fun Brian, thanks for sharing. Can you go into more details on the cleaning/processing part of this? I am going to give this a try in southeast this spring, ang at this point I don't have a clear understanding about how you do the equivalent of filleting them (see, I don't even know what it is called!).

Jim

Grab em by the legs.. eyeballs away from you.
Whack the corner of their shell (their noggin) against a nice corner or something hard.. the shell will pop off. Twist. Break into 2 pieces. Clean out the guts (fresh water helps). Done.

After a couple.. you should be able to do it all in one motion. Grab, whack and twist at the same time.. bam. Then clean out their guts.

here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2t5GQ...eature=related

or;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKaR0...eature=related

[Fishhuntster]

Niiiice!

[kasilofchrisn]

Crabbin in Homer

Nice job Dave and Brian!!
Tried to go out crabbing on Saturday but with 5' rollers out there we figured it just wasn't worth it. Will have to wait until the season opens again in July to see if last years hot spots are still good.
As for cleaning the crab, after you remove the shell just break them in half.
Next shake out all the brown guts.Any guts that don't shake out pick out with the tip of a knife. Remove the jaw and any excess shell from the bottom of the halves. Finally remove the green gills from the top of the halves using your fingers or scrape with a knife.
I find it's a lot easier to clean them before cooking. You can fit more in the pot that way. I like to eat them when they are hot and if you leave them whole you are left trying to clean a boiling hot crab before you can eat it.
Way easier to clean a crab than fillet a fish. You can't really screw it up and you always end up with a perfect looking cleaning job.
Fresh crab is always the best eating you can get.
Last summer I always seemed to find a lot of crabs in the pots with a heavy sort. Usually 90-190 crabs between the two pots with 12 -25+ legal size males .Seems like the pictures I've seen lately don't show the same kind of numbers. Do I need to find Some spots without such a heavy sort or is this just a winter crab thing?
Can't wait for crab season again!!! Chris

[HainesAKFisherman]

Nice catch... thanks also to ICB for posting those videos... I was trying to explain to a freind how to clean crab the other day over the phone... now I will just email him those links.

[AKDSLDOG]

Awsome man, you didn't drink all of Joshua's home brew did ya? I have to head down that way in a few weeks and hate to show up to a empty KEG! :eek:

[Brian M]

Awsome man, you didn't drink all of Joshua's home brew did ya? I have to head down that way in a few weeks and hate to show up to a empty KEG! :eek:

I had my share, but he was brewing up a brand new batch while I was there. I think it was bottled the day after I left, so you should be good.

[bushrat]

Great pics Brian

Thanks for the pics, Brian. Sure is fun to go out with Cap'n Dave on K-bay. Was neat learning how to shuck crabs too, which was a lot easier I thought than actually doing the eating part <grin>. Glad you guys were successful!

Hope Dave doesn't mind, but here's a shot of him at the helm of the Blackfish:

[DRIFTER_016]

Sweet, he has the retro 70's fuzzy dice happnin'