Chicken Necks on a String

This past weekend, we gave a go of another pastime in our new hometown - we went crabbing! The Pamlico Sound here is full of Atlantic Blue Crabs, and we were out to catch our fair share. And how do you catch said blue crabs you might ask? Well, you skewer some chicken necks to a rig at the end of a string. And then you toss it in the water and wait for a tug.

I feared my camera would take a swim if I took it with me, but here's a quick cell phone pic:

You pull your bait back to the dock slowly and then scoop up the crab with a net. Our very first try netted us a big 8-inch crab!



Our second try got us this little guy, right at the minimum of 5-inches.



The rest of our afternoon, a whole lot of nothing on our line but a whole lot of fun for the three of us. Honestly, we had a blast!

And you know what happens when you put a big crab in the same cooler as a much smaller crab? Big crab kills small crab - yep - put his claw right through the poor guy's shell.



What's worse... you can't eat these guys once they're dead because they release toxins into their system, so the fish in the canal behind our house got to enjoy him.

But we got to cook up the big guy and watching my hubby try to get him out of the cooler and into the pot was worth every ounce of sweat I exuded that afternoon.



Now, I think we would have gone crabbing again before tasting this critter, just because it was so much fun, but after tasting him - we will definitely go again! Delish!!! I am really starting to love our new home more and more.