I have just purchased a canal front home in North Padre, South of Corpus Christi. This past weekend (May 21-24), I put out 3 wire crab trabs full of chicken necks and later fish parts. Over a 3 day period, I only got 1 crab. The canal is 8-10' deep. Are there better places to catch crabs? Could the problem be the high amount of fresh water runoff, channel too deep, or some other problem?

CA100 - I think you are setting yourself up for some bad jokes with this topic. But...
I live on the canal on Padre Island. This past weekend I caught a redfish and filleted it (spelling?) And placed what I could fit into a crab trap. I put out 1 wire trap at the end of my dock in about 6 1/2' of water and got 3 blue crabs in the trap two days later. They are about 5" - 6" across the top. Three weeks ago I tried the same thing with no result.
In Pensacola I never caught many off of chicken or turkey necks; only fish backbones. There's no real advice from me, but I can tell you there are some nice blue crabs in that canal. I wish I knew more to tell you.

Last weekend I took my two boys down to Freeport to hit the beach and then go "catch crabs" (no jokes). Having never done this before, we used fishing line and chicken wing pieces (found some nearly expired ones on sale cheap at Kroger). We were near Surfside beach in an area adjacent to the shipping channel. It's a very shallow estuarine swampy-area that we had seen people crabbing a few weeks prior. We just tossed the chicken parts a few feet out and between me and my eight-year-old, we caught eight. The two year old has been saying "crabs" ever since. They were delicious.

It sounds to me from what you're saying that maybe the 8'deep canal may not be the best place to catch crabs? Does anybody else have an opinion on that?