i usually peel,gill and wrap in tin foil but i found a box in back of my freezer that must have been a rush job and frozen whole unwrapped.
anyways ive been using them lately and they are full of juice in better condition than the wrapped.
anyone do them like this.

With some yes. Keeps them in very good nick. I dont like foil though. Bloody stuff sticks and is difficult to get off, you also cant see what type of crab is in there if you accidentally mix a few up.

i always freeze shore crabs whole and untouched, i think they keep their juices better than the peeled and feathered ones.
spiders are a different matter though, they have to be prepared and feathered whilst very fresh otherwise you just end up with a load of mush.
during the hound season we fish the shore crabs as they are, (whole and unpeeled)they seem to pick up the bigger fish.

thats what i thought last night they were in perfect condition and juicier.
why does all the mags say to gill them ,i heard that was only for river crab .

Aye Maximo,had similar experience a couple of years ago,so last year kept a hundred or so in there natural state,soon as there backs blew off I wrapped the whole thing in clingfilm.a couple of months later a little bit of work on the shore
maybe taking the legs off and other bits of shell
the bait was much juicier ands in my trials caught good amounts of fish (against my mate, fishing same rig etc, only with ordinary delunged/shelled frozen crab.)
this year I'll be freezing even more in the natural state, hopefully with the same excellent results.cheers

think im going to split mine half and half this year.

Probably a dumb question - if you have a good supply of fresh crab, is it really necessary to go through all the preparation of removing all shell, gills etc when presenting the bait on the hook, given that they would in nature just be stripped anyway. So if you have fresh blown crab, can you tell me why it's better to prepare the crab and bind on, as opposed to cutting it in half and securing with elastic? Surely if it looks crab like, won't that look more natural to the fish than a crab sausage?

I haven't used peeler much and haven't yet sussed the easy (lazy) man's way of presenting the bait well.

I don't get the time to collect my own, so if I have to go to the expense of buying peelers, can you share the secrets of decent presentation. Last time I tried, I'd squeezed most of the juice out of the poor critters.

sometimes softies fish better than peeled crab for flounders westie,just like you said cut in half and presented with the legs hanging down,gills left in.
but with split crab i would take them out,just out of habit more than out else.
depends what youre fishing for with how you present it.

Bait elastic can squeeze most of the precious yellow gunge/scent out of a crab in minutes,some lads up here still prefer to use light cotton to bind on a crab bait.
cheers