They won't escape out of the bucket. Honest. How to keep and use peeler crab as bait.

Picture the scene. You've got just walked back through the door after a long few hours stomping through knee deep mud collecting crab. You put your bucket down on the kitchen and you hear the usuall "your not keeping them in here" 

to which I replied, 

"how the hell are they going to get out of there? They'll be fine"

Hours pass by and we are sat in the sofa watching the telly. Tappa tappa tappa tappa. Tappa tappa tappa 

"What's that?" I was asked 

"What? I can't hear anything" (which of course I could) 

"Those bloody crabs had better not of escaped"

"How the hell would they have gotten out of that bucket? It's impossible"

Another minute or so passed by when CREEEEEAAAAKKKKKK, the living room door swings open and in walks a gurt great louster of crab and plonks itself down on the new IKEA rug. 

Well, that's not how to do it, so to save any of the the potential divorce that nearly followed said incident I thought I'd do up a quick guide for beginners on how to keep and use peeler crab as bait. 

I'm no scientist but shore crab peel the throughout the year as part of their natural growth cycle, similar to how a snake sheds its skin. They are generally collected from traps or pots which are set in the mud at low tide. People are very protective over their pots so don't be tempted to go raiding. 

Like any other natural product there a shortages and gluts. As I write this now there is hardly a peeler crab in Cornwall (apart from in my personal stash!) yet a few days ago I was buying 200-300 every couple of days. 

Any good stockist will try and keep a few hundred in stock. This is because the crab will be in various states of readiness and for fishing you need them to be cracking or popping, literally shells falling off. The image below shows what a crab should look like when you buy them from a shop. 

You'll see the back shell is lifting and will easy peel away from the crab. The reason I keep hundreds in is so that I can bring the crab on to the stage where it is ready to fish. Some of the crab I get in will take well over a week before any cracks start to appear and if the cracks are not there then it just won't peel and you might as well be using hardbacks. The adverse side is that once a crab is popping you've only got around 48 hours before he will die. I am able to manipulate the crab to either hold them back from popping or bring them on based on demand. 

When crabs are in stock your best bet is buy in bulk. They are easy to store and look after and can last a while. I often have people ask me for 50 or 60 who have 30 that are ready to use and another 30 that are not quite there. They will use the ready crab for the first couple of days and by the time they are ready use the harder crab, they are ready too. You'll probably not get any discount buying in bulk (you won't in here anyway!) but it does guarantee you that you've got the bait if you want to go out fishing. And what you don't use, you can freeze down and use for the winter cod fishing. 

To keep crab all you need is a small cool box, a couple of freezer packs and a small hand spray bottle with a bit of salt water in it. 

The crabs just need to be kept cool and moist so all you need to do is keep them somewhere cool (the garage?) in a box, change the freezer pack over every day and give them a quick squirt of water a couple of times a day. It really is that simple. 

Let's say your crab are a bit hard, what you need to do is warm them up slightly so I would leave the cool pack out to let them come to room temperature and wet them down a bit more. This can turn a hard crab to a popping crab in less then 24 hours. If you want to hold them back then you need to keep them as cool as possible. 

So now your able to keep crab all you need to do is peel them. It's pretty self explanatory really. I always take the claws off first. I grab the bottom segment, nearest the body, and twist as I pull. The twist saves ripping the crab to bits. 

Once you've done that then I peel his top shell off. From the back

Then I take his thorax, tail cover and side shell off

Leaving me with a plum, juicy, soft crab. 

I then put my hook through it a couple of times and give it a good wrap with bait elastic. A wise man once told me there was no such thing as too much bait elastic-a philosophy I stand by. 

I always make to sure to have plenty of my hook showing so as not to risk obscuring the point. 

There are many variations of this. Some people leave the legs on, some people don't, some people only peel the top shell off. There are no right or wrong ways to do it. It's the quality of the bait that counts. 

A bit of a disclaimer here too-you can usually expect your crab to be a fair bit bigger then the ones pictured here. The reason they are so small is because I keep the small ones for myself to save any of you lot moaning about the size of them. If I do have small ones in I sell them BYGOF so no one loses out. 

As always, feel free to ask any questions and I'll try my best to answer them.