Crabs and Such

Hello friends,

This past week I was fortunate enough to spend the week at the Pines with my family from Ohio. It has been quite the adventure. Adventure you ask? Yes. I went crabbing for the first time in oh, fifteen years. I went with two Ohio-ans whose nearest water is the pond outside their house. There is on salt water near them unless they mix water and salt in a glass. The point I am trying to make is that all three of us who went crabbing were very inexperienced.

Me, my 14 year old cousin Ellen, and my carpenter Uncle Mike, went crabbing from a canoe. Yes, a canoe. Our first endeavor was on Tuesday. We took the canoe to a local crab pier in Ocean Pines. This pier is very hard to get to and not many Piners know of its whereabouts. This could be due to the fact of the very stingy man who lives in front of the pier. He was kind enough to come out of his very large house and tell us we were not allowed to take a canoe down to the pier. The sign obvbiously says "No boats." He was right, however, my Dad had called the police and made sure it was okay to bring a canoe. The man, however, was skeptical and began yelling at us some more. My Dad continued to yell and it just became one big awkward turtle. In fact, I found myself saying outloud, "This is awkward. This is awkward," repeatedly. The man was very rude and we took our canoe down to the pier anyways.

The three of us finally get out of the canoe and my dad left to go fishing. About five minutes into our journey, with one chicken part in hand, my uncle stopped himself from throwing the disgusting bait overboard at the sight of my Dad waving. Apparently, the rude man had called the police and we were not allowed to canoe. It was a very unfortunate evening, however, the next day was better.

Naturally, my Dad called the police station and "sorted out" the issue, (aka he yelled a lot and "took care of it.) We later received a voice message saying that we could, in fact, bring a canoe to the pier in question and that they would change the sign from saying "no boats" to "no motorboats." This satisfied me, but not my Dad. No no. He needed to go that extra dirty mile to make the rude man mad. He is making sure a picture of the pier is put onto the Ocean Pines website so that every Piner can make use of it and make the rude man even ruder and madder.

Even though we could go back to the same pier, we opted not to...out of fear. We went to a public boat launch and ended up crabbing there from our canoe. Crabbing is a lot easier than I thought! We tied string to some chicken parts and then threw it out into the water as bait. As soon as you feel a tug, you slowly draw the line up and the crab comes right up with it! We easily had 25 crabs, however, only one of them was of legal size. You see, crabs have to be at least 5 inches from point to point on their shell in order to keep them. Although we did not keep any crabs, I am certain my next adventure will be more successful!

The next crabbing adventure will take place this sunday. This time Captain Antonio Michael will be aboard. Stay tuned for results...