The other day, a friend of mine invited my girls and I to join her family on a dock at the Montauk Lake Club to go “Crabbing”. I asked how this was done and how the kids could get involved and then her answer was something I had a hard time imagining: “You use chicken legs”…What?
Well I met them on the dock and, low and behold, there the kids were on the dock lowering chicken legs tied onto the end of a string into the water and before I knew it, I heard, “You got one! Ok, hold on…” as an adult carefully helped the child lure the crab back up and then right into a pail of water! The kids were squealing with delight at their bucket of crabs. The best part was that one chicken leg would stay on the string for a while and catch many a crab.
I’m not squeamish but I am not a fisherwoman by any stretch of the imagination but was happy because my kids loved this! They beamed with pride over their successes and were totally involved. You can pretty much bring the leg to the crab and before you know it, you have a catch!
At the end, when it’s time to return the crabs to the water, you have yet another game to play! That day, the crabs had a race back into the water. Before that, the kids got to pick their favorite to win and prepared to watch the race. My friends dumped out the crabs on the dock as the kids cheered the crabs on and definitively did not stay loyal to any one crab but had fun the whole time.
The age of kids with us ranged from 2 to 8. If you have older ones, they can be great helpers. So get your chicken legs, a bucket and some string and go “Crabbing”.
Some great places to go crabbing in Montauk include the Jetties at Gosman’s and Gin Beach, the fishing docks, the docks on Fort Pond and the vaious docks on Lake Montauk.
