Crabbing with trotline is a summer pastime

Hand lines are popular choice on docks, piers along Chesapeake Bay

Let’s just get this out of the way from the get-go: With all due respect, there’s zero chance North Carolina or Louisiana blue crabs taste better than their Chesapeake Bay cousins. And I say this in my best Ricky Bobby vernacular. Perhaps it’s the bay’s unique mix of salt and fresh water that give our crustaceans that oh-so perfect sweet meat. Whatever the reason, there’s no debate.

However, this season if you’ve tried to get a few dozen to feed visiting friends and relatives, then you know market prices have been through the roof and availability has been scarce at times for these Chesapeake icons. Like all things related to the COVID economy, the complete answer is complicated; the quick answer is higher demand and lower supply.

On a recent morning, a friend from the neighborhood took

me, our college buddy and his son out to help run his trotline. (If you’re from east Baltimore or anywhere in Pennsylvania, perhaps you pronounce it “trout line.”)

My friend’s son graduated college last year when the world was in the deep throes of the pandemic. I thought to myself, what a contrast to the world I’d launched into more than 30 years previously. Yet, he’s already on a career path; back then I was simply concerned with making sure the boat was fueled and the beer was cold.

As I waited to be picked up on the pier, I made small talk with three folks who were already busy catching their dinner. They were using the simplest crabbing method, the hand line, which is a ubiquitous activity at many public docks and piers up and down the bay during the summer.

You can purchase commercially made lines or fashion them yourself. Chicken necks are the overwhelmingly popular choice for bait. I have no idea if that’s where the term “chicken necker” derived from, but I like to think it did. No matter, hand-lining is great fun for adults and kids. Be forewarned, however. Rig at least a half-dozen per kid or risk having a mutiny on your hands. Also, don’t set the lines all the same depth or location. Vary them and change your bait when it washes out.

There were no chicken necks on my friend’s skiff. Just like sport anglers, recreational crabbers run the gamut in terms of how seriously they pursue these crustaceans and the sophistication of their gear. Our buddy is dialed in, and his boat and gear are exemplars of efficacy. Threestrand nylon line, snoods dangling every 6 feet with onion bags at the end filled with razor clams. Years ago, I swapped a fishing reel for a similar trotline setup, though not as nice, and never looked back.

We were on the water before dawn, when the world is simpler. The humidity was gone, and the morning air had a saltiness that whispered summer. We laid two lines of unequal lengths. For whatever reason, the longer trotline produced far better. There was a stretch when father and son dipped furiously, as if they were born to it. As the line rose over the roller arm, they’d sign out, “crab…” “crab…” “Big crab!”

Fat, succulent jimmies — what that crew began calling “donkeys” — clung fast and furious to the bait bag until dislodged by the scoop of the mesh metal net. Some had to be wrestled from their feed, displaying an avarice one might liken to that of a hedge funder clawing at a local newspaper. There’s a huge distinction, however: a crab does it for survival; a hedge funder for no other reason than because he or she can. It’s a wacky world; I can’t wrap my head around it.

But I do know this: No matter how many times I see a blue crab, it’s like seeing one for the very first time. No two are identical in appearance, yet they all taste fantastic.