Multi-Purpose Crab Traps


The Island King pulled out our crab traps, made a few repairs and then planned a crabbing mission.

He called me outside a little while later to show me what he’d caught – without even baiting or putting the traps in the water.


The cats loved the traps and spent quite a while going in and out.


The next morning he called me outside because again he’d caught something without baiting or putting the traps in the water.


A turtle.

We let him go and took the traps down to a friend’s dock.

If we can catch a cat and a turtle on dry land, surely we can catch some crabs in the water.

And we did.

The first trap yielded a hermit crab, which got tossed back into the Bay.


The second trap held a stone crab.


I started licking my chops, thinking about how much I love stone crab claws but before I could say anything the Island King dropped him back into the water.

Whoa! Stone crab harvest season will be over soon and since we only take one claw per crab it takes quite a few to make a meal.

I was excited to see an even bigger stone crab in the next trap.



And again, before I could say anything the Island King tossed him back.

Dagumit. Stop that!

We had a little chat about NOT throwing any more back without taking a claw and don’t you know that none of the other traps had any in them.

We did actually manage to trap three blue crabs – which is what we were actually after.




Those didn’t get tossed back. They’ve been cleaned and are now in my freezer waiting for the next batch we catch to join them.

It won’t be long before we’ll have enough for the Island King to make us a pot of crab gumbo.

I’ve seen hermit crabs, blue crabs, stone crabs and pin fish in crab traps but this is the first time we’ve caught a cat and a turtle.

Maybe we should start calling them mulit-purpose traps instead of just crab traps.

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