Stone crab season opens

Stone crab season opens October 15th, so we have loaded up three crab pots and dropped them along our dock filled with bait.  We scored this nice grouper head from our local fish market.  

After a 24 hour soak

Our first pull on a pot and we were excited to see this huge conch clinging to the side!

We later identified it as:

 The horse conch (Pleuroploca gigantea), also known as the giant band shell, has been Florida's official state shell since 1969. This shell is native to the marine waters around Florida and can grow to a length of twenty-four inches. Young horse conchs have orange-colored shells; adults have orange apertures.

        We also caught our first crab of the season, not huge but it looks tiny next to the horse conch!

            There was also bunches of theses "mud snails" feeding on the bait in the crab pot

Betsy identifies what we found in our shell book (also note her first missing tooth!).

Biggest claw yet!

This is our most jumbo claw harvested yet! We have about five claws now, frozen and waiting to become a delicious appetizer.












Interestingly, we have only caught stone crabs lately. Good for us, bad for my blog. We have spotted the first manatees of the season and I hope to get a shot of one soon!










A little guy.















It was also Betsy's fifth birthday!

Mullet and blue crab

This was odd: a large school of mullet was milling around near the end of our dock and surfacing. I have no clue what they were doing but thought it was worthy of a photo!


























Here is John hauling the pot one beautiful morning. We had our first blue crab in the pot, but unfortunately my camera was on a black and white setting and I missed capturing his color.

Oyster toadfish

John grabbed the gloves and I grabbed the camera because another unexpected creature found it's way into the crab pot! It turns out this lovely guy is appropriately called a oyster toadfish, so here is your marine biology lesson for today:







Opsanus tau
Also known as the ugly toad, oyster cracker and "bar dog". The species can live in very bad conditions and needs little food to live. It is an omnivore. Common prey include crustaceans, mollusks, amphipods, squid, and other smaller fish. Toadfish rely upon camouflage to catch their food; they lie motionless waiting for prey to wander close by, then attack by surprise. They can be found anywhere from Maine to the Caribbean Sea.

Now you know!

Pinfish lesson

The next day we took the girls down to the dock to do some fishing. We used live shrimp and a tiny hook and the fish started biting.

I had to go to the trusty world wide web to find out what it was: a pinfish.
























Lagodon rhomboids

Pinfish make ideal bait for a wide variety of local species. Found grazing by the thousands throughout the shallow inshore waters, they’re often very easy to catch From spring to late fall large concentrations of pinfish inhabit just about every sea grass bed, bridge, pier, natural and artificial reef along both sides of the State. In the Gulf, you’ll also find pinfish actively foraging in the surf.

Now you know.

Blood blisters and birthdays

The following are instructions on how to properly remove a claw:

"Take hold of the claw with the crab facing away from you and give it a quick twist inward toward the mouth and it should snap off cleanly with no damage to the crab."
















Easy, right? Well, John suffered his first pinch as a result.
This picture doesn't do it justice....the blood blister looked much worse in real life!













After boiling this baby for 8 minutes, it took on a beautiful red color.


















I should also mention that this all took place at Caitlin's third birthday party, so John was able to thrill the crowd with his injury.

CRABS!

Look how happy John is!














After we loaded the crab pot with four leftover cooked veal sausages, we let it soak for two days. I guess it was a hit because one crab pot had one stone crab and the other contained five! We were so excited...we didn't really think that we would catch any.









For those of you that may not be familiar with stone crabs, you pop one legally sized claw off and throw the little guy back to regenerate a claw (for you to harvest again one day!). However, we weren't fully prepared
on how to do this, so back the five crabs went.







A baby stone crab was also hiding out.

Our first catch

Not having any real bait but anxious to get started, we threw some snow crab leg shells (can you tell we're craving crab?) into the pot and dropped it in. Two days later we checked the pot and I fully expected it to be void of any visitors. Nope! Inside was this huge shellfish as big as my hand. I ran back google him and it turns out that this is a "True Tulip Snail", and a big one! Below

Fasciolaria tulipa
The tulip is a carnivore that is closely related to the horse conch, both belonging to the family Fasciolariidae. It preys on other molluscs, including oysters. The thick, sculptured lip of the tulip shell is used to chip a hole in the prey's shell, then the proboscis is inserted. This is a large snail that is pointed at both ends, with a high spire and long siphonal canal. It has a smooth, spindle shaped shell with dark lines spiraling around. It can grow up to 8".



Now you know.

Hello!

Welcome to Our Crab Pot! In December we moved to our new house on the Manatee River and decided we would try our luck at catching some delicious Florida Stone Crabs in a couple of crab pots tied to our dock. The sea creatures we have met have been so much fun I have decided to document as many crab pot visitors as possible. Enjoy!