2 August 2015 - Crabbing At Wells

Crabbing is a great few hours spent together. We headed off to Wells-Next-The-Sea, and enjoyed some beautiful English summer weather.

The harbour looked idyllic, it's just like a postcard. The lifeboat is beached in the distance. 

For bait we obtained some sheep's lung from the brilliant Bowers Butchers in Gaywood.

Which Dad seemed to take excessive delight in chopping up....

We have a regular spot on the quay at Wells that nobody else seems to go for. It's perfect, never occupied and provides lots of shade for us and the crabbing bucket. Caught crabs are not happy if their water warms up too much....

Loading the lungs into the basket.

You can see how popular this lovely pastime is....

Here's Sam peeking through some weird tube-thing from the bait box.

And of course there's only one way to celebrate a successful crabbing expedition - chips from Plattens chippie!

Which we enjoyed in the shade on the benches of the harbour office. Lovely!

2012 Crabbing Pt 2 - Wells Next The Sea

We could not have chosen a more perfect day to visit Wells for our second crabbing expedition of the year.  The weather was gorgeous and Wells looked absolutely splendid in the hazy sunshine.

The plan was to do some crabbing in the morning, stuff ourselves with fish and chips for dinner, then have another session on the quayside in the afternoon.  First stop is the shoreline to fill your bucket with water...ooops, Sam looks like he's managed to catch himself in the net....

We've never seen so many people lining the harbour wall, there was hardly a vacant spot to be found.  Ha!  We have our own "secret" spot that nobody else ever thinks to use, so we took our place and soon began to reel in the swimmers.

Bowers the butchers had given us some offcuts of meat to use as bait (thanks chaps!) which we sliced up the night before then left in the sunlight as much as possible to enhance the "bouquet".

As usual we were using two methods of catching.  Above is the basket, and Dad attaching some random meaty tubes and stuff as bait.  It didn't half pong!  The other method we try is to use small net bags with bait inside.  This isn't quite as reliable usually, as the crafty crabs let go of the bags when they realise that they're out of the water and rapidly ascending skywards.  It's best to have a net to use in tandem with the bags, and position it beneath them as soon as you can when reeling them in.

We had a pretty successful morning, considering the huge numbers of crabbers all competing for the same prey.  Twelve (we think, although it's tricky counting them unless you keep a record as you go along) in the morning, but just three after dinner.  Speaking to fellow crabbers along the quay this was a common tale - we reckon the crabs must have been feeling absolutely stuffed after so much feeding, and just couldn't eat another thing....

These little chaps are always happy to be released back to nature, and man alive, you should see the speed that some of them scuttle off towards the sea!  Others quickly wiggle themselves into the mud to wait for time and tide to ensure their survival.

SPOT THE CRABS!

How many released crabs can you spot in this photo?  The answer is at the bottom of the page, but don't scroll down until you've tried to find them all.  No cheating!

Here's the meaty goodness that we used for bait, yum yum!

And the answer is - SIX!  Did you spot them all?

2012 Crabbing Pt 1 - Thornham

So it's off to Thornham for the first crabbing trip of the year.  Hot sunny weather, a pack of super-cheap bacon, and the crab-catching kit and we're set.

The weather meant that Thornham tide gate was full of people dangling their lines, so we had to make do with a new perch, the sloping part of the gate.  That's not ideal, and our bucket made a dash for freedom, ending up plonked on the oozing tidal mud where it was too difficult and/or dangerous to retrieve (see above).

Our new vantage point also proved to be less fruitful than our usual place and we only caught three or four crabs - we also think that they were maybe full up from a whole day's worth of bait and weren't interested in ours!  But we still had a whole lot of fun and will be heading off to Wells next week for a crabbing and pie day!


p.s. anyone know a decent crabbing spot near Great Yarmouth?  Sam wants to take his mum when they go there to stay later in the summer....

Crabs For Tea From Holme-Next-The-Sea

A while ago our friend Old Bob taught us how to find and catch crabs at Holme beach.  Here are a few photos of the morning.  The first two crabs we caught are in the bucket above (we caught four big ones all told, before heading home to cook them).

Here's Sam in a pool close to camera, Old Bob in the background, a flock of swooping seabirds, and Skegness windfarm in the distance.

The crabs spend the time when the tide is lowest hiding in holes in peat-like banks, covered with slippery seaweed.

Give us a twirl....

Here's Old Bob straight after dragging a crab out of its hidey-hole.

Holme beach is very long, rather pretty, and usually deserted.  Recommended!

To catch the shellfish we used hooks specially made by Old Bob, as modelled above by Sam.

Sam didn't pull out any crabs but he did find a very big starfish.

We loved crabbing, and have been back since.  And the crabs taste flipping lovely!

Crabbing At Thornham

Our second expedition in search of crabs was to Thornham, and in particular the tidal sluice gate, which was a recommended hotspot for crabs.

Unlike Wells, the "teabags" with the stinky bacon inside worked much better here, and we hauled in several of the little blighters.  Thanks to the height of the flagstones above the water plenty of them also managed to let go and drop back into the brine before we got them in the bucket.

See the picture below - I wonder what it is about crabbing that inspires Sam to perform a Rigsby Off Of Rising Damp impersonation?

Thornham wild, exposed but beautiful.  We walked halfway along the causeway pausing only to snap the sluice gate we'd occupied.

The dark dot in the distance of this picture is an old chap plodding up the creek to reach his boat (top right), maybe to haul in another few bags of freshly caught cockles?