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Floating Crabs

2K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  juro 
#1 ·
Sitting at the vise bored with all the "staples" and just wondering if anyone has ever seen stripers feeding on floating crabs.

Last summer several times I saw a number of small green crabs floating near the edge of the marsh. The crabs were alive and I suspect in the process of molting, or maybe they were up on the marsh grass or something.

The times that I saw them I did not see any fish. So although I didn't see fish eating them, I didn't see fish not eating them if that makes sense.

Any way they seemed to be completely helpless, at the mercy of the currents with "victim" stamped all over them. Also seems a pretty fun way to fish especially at night.

I figure I'll just modifiy a Striblue crab-apple removing the weight and epoxy to get a low floating profile and make a few drifts this summer to see what happens.

Just curious if anyone else has observed this or tried it...
 
#2 ·
Yeah we get that here in RI in June at the outflows of estuaries during spawn time. These are large spawning crabs and fish will key in on them at times.

It is tough fishing as it is really tough to imitate those things and get teh right action. Only one night did I really have any luck. It is fun fishing though as the stripers really attack the crabs and it sounds like people are dropping bowling balls all around your.

Then you get the baby crabs as well when they hatch. They are about the size of a pencil eraser and look just like crabs only tiny. Stripers will key in on them as well and then it turns into finesses fishing with size 10 and 12 flies which can be fun as well.

-sean
 
#4 ·
Swimmers at the elbow include blues and calicos on the south side and calicos on the bayside. Blues prefer to go way up into dark soft bottomed estuaries and calicos are clean sand animals.

Outgoing tide often gets fish on top mid-day but it's hard to tell what they're on and the fly I have on at the time seems to get instant attention and it's not a crab.

I have been out at night in years past where the fish were feeding like mad and hard to hook but it turned out to be worms or shrimp swarms in most cases where I confirmed with my high beams parked on the ramp before I went home.

From what Sean says it may be more of a nighttime phenomenon, although I am certainly no expert on the mating habits of crabs. I've always heard that mating and crabs don't mix :lildevl:
 
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