The primary season for all crab species is October to January, when they are often at their largest and populations are highest after spawning. Some regions even stretch crabbing season into July. It depends on the area and specific type of crab to know when the season is and when crabs will be their freshest.
Fall is typically the best time to crab. Beginning in September, crabs tend to “fill out” and contain a higher percentage of meat. Hard-shelled crabs contain 20%-30% meat by weight while soft- shelled crabs may have as little as 12% meat.
The biggest, heaviest crabs are typically harvested during the fall months (September to mid-November).
The best months for crabbing are September to April as the waters are warmer and more productive.
Crabbing 1-2 hours before high tide all the way through 1-2 hours after high tide the water will have good movement and this is when you have the best chance to catch the crabs.
Crab bait: Crabs are notoriously greedy and have a super sense of smell, so the smellier the bait the better. Firm favourites are raw liver, bacon, sardines, squid and fish heads (if they are a couple of days old then even better!), all of which can be found at local butchers and fishmongers throughout the region.
The best time for scooping crabs is early in the morning so you can get the crabs that have moved into the shallows from the night before.
However, a 25-minute drive away from the city of Adelaide is Port Gawler, a crabbing paradise. While it may look like a long-forgotten swampland, the shallow waters of the mangrove-laden coast make the perfect location for crabbing in Adelaide.
In South Australia, blood, bone, meat, offal, and skin of any animal other than fish, worm, or insect cannot be used as bait within 2 nautical miles from shore. Therefore, fish is used as bait exclusively land based or within 2 nautical miles from shore. Our favoured baits for Blue Swimmer Crabs are: Flathead Heads.
The Blue Swimmer Crab is widely distributed throughout the inshore waters of South Australia, particularly in areas with extensive sandy bottom and seagrass meadows in Gulf St Vincent and Spencer Gulf.
Crabs are mostly found during the full moon because they feed before the full moon. Because of this reason, crabs have a heavy diet to fulfill their nutrition requirement and make themselves buried in the sand so that they may be protected from predators.
The number of moulting crabs decreases consistently with every full moon and dark moon phase. When the tide rises, the moulting activity of crabs is affected, however, it increases during a low tide (phase of the moon ½) [3].
You might be tempted to call this practice hibernation, however, crabs do NOT hibernate, they simply lie dormant through the winter months. When water temperatures get below 50 degrees, typically sometime in November, blue crabs will leave shallow waters and burrow into the muddy or sandy bottom of deeper waters.
The simplest way to catch crabs is with a dip net. Another easy method is to drop a fishing line with bait at the end. Simply wait for a tug then pull the crab in, catching it in a net. The only downside with the line method is that you can only catch one crab at a time.
Once water is at the boil place crabs in the pot upside down. 2: Cook for approximately 5-8 mins. Once they start floating & are a very vibrant orange colour it is a good indicator to tell they are cooked. 3: Once crabs have reached this point, take them off heat and place them into cold/ice water.
Portunus trituberculatus, known as the horse crab, known as the gazami crab or Japanese blue crab, is the most widely fished species of crab in the world, with over 300,000 tonnes being caught annually, 98% of it off the coast of China.
Dead Animals
Decaying matter and carrion like dead fish and dead shrimp are important for a crab's diet. Because they are not the best hunters given their eyesight and relatively slow pace, they like to scavenge for dead meat as opposed to hunting for living meat sources.
A: Crabs like fresh bait, so some crabbers will change bait twice a day. Fresh fish or frames and heads are excellent, in particular whole mullet (score the flesh down the the bone). Chicken carcass or necks, and kangaroo meat and bones are also good but the secret is: it has to be FRESH.
Crabs are found in saltwater. This also includes brackish water also known as tidal water. These areas include saltwater marshes, bays, inlets and the ocean. Crabs also prefer to be near underwater structures such as pilings (usually from docks), bridges and sunken shipwrecks.
1. Black-fingered crab. This crab is the largest shore crab species in Australia. They can be found across southern Australia and northern New Zealand.
Best times for crabbing for Blue Swimmer crabs
The best time to head out is at low tide and follow the incoming tide back to shore.
While it's legal to keep female blue crabs in SA, we generally release the females and just keep the bigger males.
They stay in the burrows for two reasons during the day. They stay inside their burrows during the day when the hot sun heats up the beaches. It is also much harder for predators to see the tiny crabs at night than it is during daylight hours.
When the air temperature gets below 50 degrees, crabs leave their summer home of shallow inshore waters for deeper waters. There, they bury themselves into the muddy or sandy bottom by forcing their abdomen backwards with snapping motions and using their hind legs to dig in.