What bait is best for crabbing?

Answer 1

Crabs are known as scavengers, who will literally eat anything that they can sink their claws into. But, the age old question about bait really depends on what type of crabbing activity one does. Commercial crabbers in the Bering Sea, who go after the larger crabs will bait their Crab Pots with large chunks of fish, along with the fish heads and guts that people normally throw out. They may also include a bait bottle with mashed clams and other fishy viscera, and or a slowly dissolving oily and smelly chemical attractant solution. That type of baiting is obviously on one extreme.

Recreational crabbing generally requires less bait dedication; as long as there's something in the crab trap, a crab will eventually smell it and show up to try to eat it. What helps the crab smell something is water movement. If a trap is laid in dead calm waters, where there is zero tidal activity, then that scent is not going to be carried very far. This is why long time crabbers like to go to areas that have good tidal bore movement, so that any bait scent is carried, attracting crabs from a much greater distance.

Alternatively, some crabbers will augment their chances by using a lot of bait, filling a bait bag with an overflowing amount of bio material that is leaking a tremendous amount of smelly crab calling juices. What people have used as bait ranges with imagination and costs as consideration. Anything from Bunker (Atlantic Menhaden, type of oily fish) to Chicken Necks; to old 'about to spoil' and discarded fish parts (many supermarkets will sell this at reduced cost) can be used. Others will even bait their traps with cans of Cat Food that had holes punched into them.

All things considered one has to decide for him or herself how much of an investment one wants to make in the crabbing activity. There doesn't seem to be a wrong way to bait a crab trap.