MAKING TIME TO FISH FOR SPANNER CRABS
WHEN Val Wolfenden promised to take her grandson out fishing and catch him his biggest ever fish, she wasn’t joking. With the considerable help of Fish the Deep charters and a yakka live bait they ventured out to the 50 fathom reef east of the Southport seaway. After a slow start things started to heat up with a couple of small Kingies EVER thought about catching spanner crabs? If you’re like most the answer is probably no. Most Gold Coast fisherman I know chase mudcrabs and sandcrabs but never Spanner crabs. It is hard to work out why: they are great eating, easy to catch, prolific in numbers and pots are much cheaper.
While crab pots can cost you up to $50 a spanner crab frame will cost roughly $20.
I bought eight on sale for $80 and haven’t looked back.
Bait is as easy as a few pilchards and if they are on you can get up to 10 crabs on one frame. One drawback is rope. You need lots of it. A rough guide is you need 50 per cent more rope than water (75m rope for 50m of water depth). The best place to drop your frames is on the 50m line in front of the Q1. You need a good GPS so you can record where you have dropped and the best part is they don’t require long to get caught, in fact you can start checking your dillies only an hour after dropping them. You are allowed 4 dillies per person and a bag limit of 20 per person.
With a good haul they actually eat well after freezing.