Blue crab goes from boat to table on Md.’s eastern shore
WYE RIVER, Md. — Gathering with friends and cold beer to eat freshly steamed blue crabs has been a favorite summer activity on Maryland’s eastern shore for generations. But what if you grew up far from the Chesapeake in Pittsburgh and can’t help but wonder: What’s it like to actually catch these beady-eyed bottom feeders with the vice-like claws?
Not nearly as difficult as you might imagine on this popular tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, when a licensed captain is doing most of the heavy lifting.
Blue crabs like brackish, moving water, and the tidal Wye River, which branches from the Miles River near its mouth to the Eastern Bay, is both. Known for producingbig crabs, some would argue it’s the best place for crabbingin Maryland.
Chris Quaglino, a former DEA officer turned licensed boat captain, has been crabbing in the river for years. He started WyeRest Charters two years ago, offering light tackle fishing and running trotline crabbing charters, along with recreational cruises.
I arrived at Captain Quags’ dock in Queenstown, Queen Anne’s County, on a spectacularly sunny day in July, slathered in sunscreen and full of trepidation. While I love being
on the water, fishing has never been my thing. Would crabbing be hard? Or worse, would it be boring? What if I ended up with a crab clamped onto the end of a finger?
Turns out, crabbing is a little of both. There’s a lot of standing around, waiting, after the trotline is dropped in the water. And it takes some practice to spot and net a crab off the line as it’s pulled up, and toss it into a bucket without dropping it. With all that downtime, you definitely need a couple of friends, and some adult beverages, to make it memorable.
As for getting pinched, so long as you don’t lock eyes and keep your distance, you’ll be fine. It’s only when it’s cornered that a crab instinctively starts clamping its powerful pincers in self defense.
A trotline is a long line that rests on the floor of the water with anchors on either end, with baited “snoods” attached every five to seven feet in between. After it’s set, the crabs wander over and start eating the bait. When enough time has passed — usually about a half-hour — the crabber pulls the line up, with the crabs still attached, and they’re netted one by one. Then, repeat.
Captain Quags’ partner Mark Galasso, who was an oceanographer with National Marine Fisheries Service before starting a fishing charter business in 1996, likes to use greasy chicken necks for bait. (Chicken production is huge in Maryland.) Captain Quags prefers stuffing razor clams into mesh bait bags, which he then ties every 5 feet onto the trotline.
Either works, because crabs, Mr. Galasso noted, are greedy little suckers that will eat just about anything. They’re also loath to let go, which is why you can scoop them.
Blue crab season officially opens in April, but the best eating comes later in summer. The longer the crustaceans stay in the water, the bigger and plumper they get; a male crab will molt more than 20 times over a summer.
Many crabbers go out at dawn, when it’s cooler, but you can have success anytime the tides are moving. We went under cloudless skies at noon and in a fairly short time netted almost a dozen.
This time of year, male crabs — also known as jimmies — have to be at least 5½ inches to be keepers. (Mature female crabs are subject to catch restrictions during the peak season.) You can tell the difference in sex by the color of their claws: Female crabs sport “painted fingers,” or red-tipped claws, while a male’sare tinged with blue.
I had some beginner’s luck, catching a whammy of a jimmie on my first try — it measured 8 inches — and I also snatched a rare “doubler” out of the water. That’s a male crab cradling a female crab like a backpack in preparation for, well, you know!
Maryland is more protective of its crabbing industry than a lot of other states, Mr. Galasso said, because it generates more income than all other types of fishing combined — some $400 million annually. More than half of all hard-shell blue crabs harvested in the U.S. come from the Chesapeake Bay.
Crabs mate from May to early October, after which the pregnant female crabs migrate south to saltier waters toward the mouth of the bay, burrowing deep in to the mud. In the spring they start migrating north, following the current and food sources, to lay their eggs and spawn.
A recent Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Advisory Report, released in June, predicted 2019 would be a good year for blue crabs, with the crab population up 60% over last year’s to an estimated 594 million. But many of those crabs are still farther south in the bay, said Capt. Quaglino, because of the freshwater intrusion from the abundance of rain and water coming down the Susquehanna River.
“They haven’t made it to our part of the bay yet,” he said.
Bob Wittman, who has owned and operated the Stevensville Crab Shack since 1998 and ships crabs nationwide, says his haul is down by as much as 50%.
“There’s lots of dead zones in the water, with no oxygen,” he said.
Crabs are priced by availability and size, usually medium, large, extra large and jumbo. Mr. Wittman is currently charging between $199 per bushel for medium crabs (7 to 8 dozen) to $399 per bushel for extra-large crabs (5 to 6 dozen.) If you’d rather someone else do the cooking, at Fisherman’s Crab Deck, a popular crab restaurant in Grasonville, on the Kent Narrows Waterfront, expect to pay anywhere from $45 a dozen for steamed-to-order medium crabs to $90 a dozen for large crabs.
Our trio ended up there after our crabbing adventure, seated at a picnic table covered with brown paper overlooking the water. A roll of paper towels stood at the ready, along with Old Bay seasoning. The steamed crabs were dumped, rather unceremoniously, onto the table. We also got an aluminum pan filled with plastic cups of melted butter and apple cider vinegar for dipping. Eating crabs is messy.
While it’s tradition to smash the shell around the claw with a wooden mallet — the din of dozens of hungry eaters banging their dinner to bits is part of the fun of the blue crab experience — it’s better to use the knife method, Mr. Galasso told me. Granted, it requires more expertise to pry the shell away from the delicate meat with a butter or paring knife. But with practice, you can pull the entire piece of prized claw meat out at once instead of in pieces. I was happy he gra-ciously offered to do it for me.
At the Crab Deck, Orange Crush cocktails — served by the pitcher — are another local tradition if you’re not a beer drinker. Prepare to linger; eating crab is as much a social experience as it is a good meal.
A seafood lover can easily consume six to 12 crabs for dinner, and even then you might not feel full, since the meat is so delicate. So a crab feast usually also includes sides like corn on the cob and coleslaw, and maybe a bowl of vegetable or cream of crab soup.
However many you manage to pick clean, you’ll go home happy. Crabbing is a sweet summer tradition.