Crabs

[Elton]

Posted on behalf of Tom Doyle:

 

quote:

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I have just taken up angling, for Sea fish, in the river part of an estuary.

Every time that I cast out I found, when winding in, that the bait had been stripped by crabs!

Does this happen all year round?

Are there any ways of preventing it?

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[chris parker]

You can use a lump of cork on the hook snood to hold the bait off the bottom. If you use crab it is not supposed to be eaten by other crab but in my experience it is.

 

If you are useing a soft bait like worm try wrapping it in Squid with bait elastic. The scent will be there but the crab will take a while to get through the squid.

[Kieran Hanrahan]

Hi On behalf of Tom...

 

Another option, a little trickier, is to use a paternoster rig with a good six feet or more between the lead and the bottom hook. Provided you have a decent slope and level of water, this will keep your baits off the bottom - useful in all sorts of situations, not just estuaries...

 

A variation on this is to clip a grip lead up almost below the bottom hook / snood, leaving the extra six feet of trace hanging below the lead/clip, so that casting is easier but that it releases on impact with the water, thereby allowing you haul the trace in a bit and leave the baits wafting in the current.

 

BTW, most crabs can swim quite well off the bottom in slack water or even slight currents. A common species around Irish and UK shores is the "swimming crab", so the recommendations on using tougher baits or bigger baits are very sound advice. Look on the bright side, all those crabs are potential food for big predators like bass...

 

Fresh mackerel with the skin left on is good bait, and a "pocket" of squid stuffed with lugworm works well on a pennel rig for bigger fish.

 

Alternatively try spinning a shallow diving lure, german sprat or even a leadhead shad for bass, and the odd sea trout / salmon if they run your particular river.

 

I have even heard of people ground baiting with a whole fish and guts at low tide in an effort to keep the crabs occupied somewhere else, although it would seem to me that a whole fish would attract the fish as well!!!

 

Or like me, change your baits religiously every five minutes and bait up a spare rig while you are waiting...

 

FWIW

[JimLad]

On the south coast (I fish in the solent) we get pestered by spider crabs too. Those pesky critters have a habit of munching thru your trace line and nicking your hook as well as your bait - I went for a dangle at the weekend and lost about 5 hooks due to them :mad:

 

All part and parcel of the joy of Sea fishing I'm afraid - At least in the Estuarys you might be safe from the dreaded spiders

 

All the advice above is good it really comes down to personal preference and what species your after re bait. You can get floating beads too which might help. Bait elastic might slow them down a tadge too - maybe...

[rufus]

I watched crabs and shrimps in their natural environment last year. They scurry for cover as soon as anything larger than themselves turns up. Noticed also that spells of crab & shrimp activity, bait stripping etc, coincided with the lack of fish presence. As soon as a shoal of fish turned up the crabs buried themselves and the shrimps dissapeared. I suppose that this may mean crab & shrimp activity indicates an absence of fish and maybe a change of mark or at least casting to a fresh area from where you already are. I must add that these were small shore crabs I was watching....maybe does not apply to larger edibles who are big and heavily armoured.