June 11, 2010

“I think he just asked me to go catch minnows in a crab pot.”

For those of you not from Maryland, a crab pot is essentially an enclosed framework of mesh wire that provides openings for crabs to enter.  Bait is added, the pot is lowered to the bottom of the water, and crabs are attracted to the bait.  Once inside the cubicle, the pot is designed so that crabs cannot exit the same way they entered.  Depending on the design of your pot, crabs may “float” to an upper compartment.  Either way, they are trapped and ready to be culled and checked for “keepers”.

People who have never dropped a crab pot or lowered a trotline just haven’t lived.  Recollections of crabbing with a trotline on the Wye River with one of my high school buddies are fond memories indeed.  It wouldn’t take us too terribly long in those days to have a bushel of adult males ready for steaming.  I can smell the “Old Bay” seasoning now.

Of course, those memories were made possible by all the things we used:  the trotline, my friend’s dad’s boat, the beautiful Wye River, a crab net, a bushel basket, and chicken neck bait.  I can still see the crabs coming to the surface, attached to the bait and ready to be netted.  It was common to have two large crabs attached to each chicken neck.  Occasionally, we’d net three at a time.  Our success was dependent on plentiful crabs.  The Wye was a perfect location.   

We sometimes send our business associates on “fishing” or “crabbing” trips with little to no equipment.  Often, we provide the wrong outfitting altogether.  On once such occasion, a friend of mind was asked to do the impossible and to do it by himself.  After thinking about what he had been charged to do, my fellow Marylander remarked, “I think he just asked me to go catch minnows in a crab pot.”

A good laugh ensued as we pictured hundreds of minnows swimming through the open mesh wire of a crab pot, nary a one to ever be trapped.  I wonder how many of our colleagues are out on similar missions right now.   

Craig Halsey

They Said It

June 11, 2010