We rented a house for the whole week next week and I am going to do some surf fishing. I wanted to try to catch some crabs. Can you catch blue crabs in the surf? What is the best technique..traps, hand line/net, etc. I can't find much on the web. Thanks.

In the 50s and 60s we would catch blue crabs in the surf. Stick 2 poles in the surf on the first sandbar as far apart as you wish to walk. String heavy cord between them. Every 6-8' attach another cord with a heavy weight and horse meat or chicken neck. Let it drop down to your feet and continue. Go back to the beach. Every 10-15 mins looks at your lines. The ones that are being pulled out into the Gulf likely have a blue crab on them. Wade back to your main cord with a crab or dip net and slowly pull the cord with bait toward you. Once you can see the crab place the net under and slowly scoop it out. It always worked for us in the surf or bays.

You want to go crabbing with a full moon. The crabs will be full of meat. A dark moon and they are only about half full.

Interesting, I never heard of that.

I learned that as a kid from an oldtimer who taught my Dad how to crab. Dad was born in Brooklyn and Gulf coast conditions were a big learning curve for him. He also taught us to keep the crabs in a wash tub and cover them with a wet tow sack. We never had any problems with crabs going bad before we got home to cook them.

I guess coming from Brooklyn to the Gulf Coast WAS a big change for him and you. I don't live near the coast any more so I don't get a chance to do any crabbing any more but when I used to live on Clear Lake I kept traps active all the time. I would start the pot boiling before I would even go out and pull the traps as they were just outside the back door. I would just rinse them off with some fresh water and dump them straight into the pot. Ahhhh the good old days.

I remember crabbing in Clear Creek upstream from the lake. There was an ice house and they allowed crabbing for $1 per day per car. I wouldn't even want to drop a line in that water now.

We also went crabbing at Challenger Park off of West Nasa Rd. 1. I used to run trotlines further up the creek around the Friendswood area. All of that is highly contaminated now since the Superfund cleanup project started near Scarsdale Rd. 25 years ago.

Neighbor's dad had a beach house at Bolivar close to the old fort. We would walk to the North Jetty with just our poles. We looked around the jetty for trash fish others had thrown away. We could cut some off, cast out close to shore and catch small fish. When we had a handful we would go past the paved portion and fish off the rocks without ever buying bait.