# blue crabs for tog bait



## UnknownFish (Sep 12, 2007)

i would like anyones opinion on this and if you think using blue crabs instead of the green crabs for tog bait will work, i can get plenty of small female blue crabs really cheap and just thought they might work as well as the green crabs. plz anyone that has tried or not leave your opinion, thx.


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## Teddy (May 14, 2006)

UnknownFish said:


> i would like anyones opinion on this and if you think using blue crabs instead of the green crabs for tog bait will work, i can get plenty of small female blue crabs really cheap and just thought they might work as well as the green crabs. plz anyone that has tried or not leave your opinion, thx.


 Why would you even consider small female blue crabs as bait, For one if they are not soft or they are small females they would proly not be mature yet so they are illegal to keep in the first place!
They are also the only sustainable resource for laying them eggs that let us all enjoy the MALE blue crabs,  I would hope you would reconsider before using a small female blue crab as bait and if you do use them I hope you get caught and go to jail.


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## cygnus-x1 (Oct 12, 2005)

Teddy ... I feel ya ... but before we condemn him to jail let's hear what he considers small females. I can (right now) run down the street to any one of 3 crab dealers and get a bushel of female crabs (legal). I believe #2 crabs are considered small. Persinally I don't like them harvesting females but that is just me and it is not against the law. Now if UnknownFish is talking about trapping tiny female crabs and using them then that is another story altogether. I hope (and have a good feeling) that UnknownFish did not mean using females the illegal way.

What Say Ye UnknownFish ?


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## Teddy (May 14, 2006)

*I understand*



cygnus-x1 said:


> Teddy ... I feel ya ... but before we condemn him to jail let's hear what he considers small females. I can (right now) run down the street to any one of 3 crab dealers and get a bushel of female crabs (legal). I believe #2 crabs are considered small. Persinally I don't like them harvesting females but that is just me and it is not against the law. Now if UnknownFish is talking about trapping tiny female crabs and using them then that is another story altogether. I hope (and have a good feeling) that UnknownFish did not mean using females the illegal way.
> 
> What Say Ye UnknownFish ?


 I never crabbed or tasted a crab till I was 24yrs young and when I did I was taught that even though legal by law it was unethical to keep, eat, or kill females. 

If the ones he is using are legal that's all fine and good no jail time is needed. I would check the aprons then for maturity before showing up with them at OC or elsewhere so as to avoid the slammer.

Just erks my chain that the females are allowed to be harvested in the first place! I apologize for getting so emotional about somethin that is outta my control PLEASE leave the females alone to breed so they can sustain the population of the MALE BLUE CRAB!


People in MD want an answer to where the big MALES are and why haven't they been around in abundance, like they used to be? Why are Male Blue Crabs so expensive? I can tell you it ain't global warming!!


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## e-mag (Jun 15, 2006)

almost like keeping a cow during a spring run before they enter the chesapeake bay. it is legal..


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## fingersandclaws (Oct 17, 2005)

Everyone needs to get off the their high horse . . . especially you Teddy. WTF is wrong with you? Why are ya jumping on the dude for asking a simple question. We talked about this before, but don't impose your paradigm of ethical morality on anyone else. 

To answer your question, they work fine . . . the headboats use em' depending on what is cheaper at the time. If ya got em' cheap from a legal source, use em' and catch something delicious. Don't let the others tell you what your morals should be. If eating females were illegal, you'd have to shut down most of the crab places in DC . . . the entire male/female crab thing is a social thing. FYI, most of the picked crab meat comes from Venezuela or Vietnam . . . not from the Bay.


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## Teddy (May 14, 2006)

*Talk about what before?*



fingersandclaws said:


> Everyone needs to get off the their high horse . . . especially you Teddy. WTF is wrong with you? Why are ya jumping on the dude for asking a simple question. We talked about this before, but don't impose your paradigm of ethical morality on anyone else.
> 
> To answer your question, they work fine . . . the headboats use em' depending on what is cheaper at the time. If ya got em' cheap from a legal source, use em' and catch something delicious. Don't let the others tell you what your morals should be. If eating females were illegal, you'd have to shut down most of the crab places in DC . . . the entire male/female crab thing is a social thing. FYI, most of the picked crab meat comes from Venezuela or Vietnam . . . not from the Bay.




Legal crabs for bait fine, Pushing morals or whatever on people SCREW YOU


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## ashtonmj (Apr 26, 2007)

If anyone recalls, Unknownfish works for a seafood market too so he has access to cheap, not retail priced stuff for bait, so its a totally logical and economical question for him to ask and get opinions.


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## zimmy (Oct 19, 2007)

I would use the tog for crab bait personally...


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## Anthony (Jul 3, 2002)

I've used the females before for tog bait and they worked fine.


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## Talapia (Apr 27, 2003)

UnknownFish said:


> i would like anyones opinion on this and if you think using blue crabs instead of the green crabs for tog bait will work, i can get plenty of small female blue crabs really cheap and just thought they might work as well as the green crabs. plz anyone that has tried or not leave your opinion, thx.


Like others have said, they work. They are more
of a VA tog bait then MD bait though. The only
times we really use them is Feb and Mar
when we cannot get white or green crabs
anymore. Nothing wrong with using 
small female crabs and anybody who tells
you different is full of crap. I was suprised
on my last offshore trip down to VA last month, 
Long Bay Point and Tackle actually had green 
crabs in stock....


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## lil red jeep (Aug 17, 2007)

*this is fun...*

opcorn:opcorn:opcorn:


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## UnknownFish (Sep 12, 2007)

first off for you non crab knowlegables, female crabs only spawn one time and one time only, when they get the half moon apron then they will no longer lay eggs, when they have the triangle apron they can still be spawned out, why leave a non spawning crab in the water to eat food that other crabs can eat, femlaes when they become mature only spawn once and most of them spawn when they are very small, for the rest of you thank you for your input its greatly appreciated, i hate a$$holes that have no clue about what they are talking about, i have been in the seafood business all my life, why would i harvest anything thats gonna destroy my living.


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## UnknownFish (Sep 12, 2007)

females also can be any size to keep once the apron is mature, on a non mature female they have to be the same size as a legal male crab, do your homework folks!


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## UnknownFish (Sep 12, 2007)

and teddy there are plenty of big male crabs, i get crabs in my store every day that are 7 inches and bigger, and they arent exspensive, and they are caught out of the choptank river,


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## powerburn (Jun 26, 2007)

you tell them


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## UnknownFish (Sep 12, 2007)

ima say this, in the spring of the year we get females out of ocean city that are completly mature and there are close to 20 dozen to a bushel, now thats alot of wasted space in our waters if you ask me.


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## UnknownFish (Sep 12, 2007)

guess im done venting for now, i need to get to bed im off for 4 days and im starting out by hitting solomons tommorow morning.


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## UnknownFish (Sep 12, 2007)

just thought of one more thing, when you buy your precious backfin crabmeat and lump crabmeat "that is actually from maryland" it is usually female crab meat.


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## Teddy (May 14, 2006)

*A-Holes and Facts*

"Sponge Crab"
"Pregnant" female blue crabs carry fertilized eggs under their abdomen. From a distance these eggs resemble a sponge, hence the term "sponge" crab. It takes about two weeks for the eggs to "ripen" and be released into the water to hatch. It is illegal in many states to possess sponge crabs.

Please note that there is a lot of misinformation being circulated about the female blue crab and whether she has ever released eggs. Some people wrongly believe that sooks taken from the brackish waters of the mid to upper Chesapeake Bay have released eggs (spawned) and are therefore fair game. This is probably not true. When the female is about to become sexually mature, she molts and then mates with a male. During this mating, the male's sperm is transferred to special sacs inside the female for use at a later time... much later! Here's where we clear up the confusion: Mated, Yes. Spawned, No. There's a big difference between the two! After mating, and toward the end of the season, the "impregnated" sooks will migrate south toward the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. It is here, in the high-salinity waters of the extreme lower Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic ocean, where she actually fertilizes her eggs and spawns.

What does this mean in plain English? It means that the bulk of the sooks taken from Maryland and Virginia waters are females that have probably never released any eggs. Think about this fact the next time you take a sook from these waters. 

For someone thats been in the business all there lives you haven't learned very much now have you! Crawl back under your crab basket boy and come back out when your homeworks done.


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## Digger (Jan 4, 2000)

Airdown more than that.


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## ashtonmj (Apr 26, 2007)

Before this gets locked I thought I'd post some links. 

Everyone needs to stop using the internet, Wikipedia, and like webpages for garbage information and believing it as blind truth. It is becoming rampant. Peer reviewed scientific journals are the only thing that counts when you want to start spewing information on life history and ecology. I'm leaving for vacation in two days and I really don't feel like getting into my accounts or searching so this will do for now.

LINK 1

LINK 2

All this thread really wanted was a yes or no answer, so kudos to those who replied to the thread originator within the context.


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