What could be more fun on a drizzly December afternoon than catching crabs? Not much (as long as it's the right sort of crabs you're catching of course.) We've been meaning to try our hand at crabbing for a while now and after finally nabbing a crab pot from a friend we had no more reasons not to give it a try. So, armed with a crab pot, some last minute googled tips and the vague knowledge that crabs do live round about these parts, we set out to find our dinner. After a quick stop off at the local fish shop to scrounge some fish heads for bait we were off! Now one thing we do know is that most people putting out crab pots have one key tool......a boat. We don't have a boat but we didn't want a minor disadvantage like that to deter our efforts so we decided to sling the thing off the dock nearest the pub. That way we could go for quick beer and watch our spot while we waited for 20 minutes or so for our pot to fill with crustaceans. I sound optimistic and I was. It's my new thing. Dale on the other hand was less than positive about the whole affair :)
The dock was slippery and I might even go so far as to say treacherous with a 2 year old, a 4 year old, and a clutz with a camera. I continued with my optimism and hoped that none of us fell into the ice cold waters of the Pacific. Here's Neil about to don his latex gloves for handling the bait...pussy! You can tell from their beaming smiles that the kids love doing things like this. I was still pretty paranoid about loosing them into the ocean but there's nothing like a bit of immanent danger to make kids smile!
We loaded the pot with bait and slung it in. Dale handily seems to know a lot about knots so we were at least able to make our pot's rope look somewhat professional from above the water. I mean I wouldn't want anyone to think we didn't have flippin' clue or anything.
Once the pot was slung we found we were immediately surrounded by billions of large and scarier than usual seagulls so we retreated to the safety of the nearby pub.
We amused ourselves with crayons and guinness and I'm pretty sure this made Dale about as happy as I've ever seen him.
The kids enjoyed Dales stories of the old days for a while and then......they realized they'd heard this one before and decided to take action......
Apparently even covering ones ears and singing "Twinkle Twinkle" as loudly as possible doesn't make him stop. MAKE HIM STOP!!!! I'm joking of course Dale, you know I love your stories, especially the one about that emerald mine in Ecuador....
Anyway, time to head back down the dock to check on our catch.
The moment of truth.....
We had a grand total of 5 crabs! WooooHooooo! 3 Dungeness and 2 Red Rock. Unfortunatley 3 were a little on the piddly size so we had to throw them back. *Ahem*, let me rephrase that.....I had to throw them back and pick them all out of the crab pot with my bare hands because "someone" is too much of a pussy to touch crabs! :)
Back in the safety of our kitchen Neil was happy to do some crab wrangling with a pair of nice long tongs. Neil and I ate our crabs for dinner and they were yummy!
Dale ate a beef pie.
2 comments:
Ha ha ha ha ha! Love it.
It reminds me of the old days of shrimping at Greatstone. (From the kids point of view, obviously, not the going to the pub thing.)
Who'da thunk that Neil would be so wimpy about a thing like a crab eh?
Isobel looks so much like you Nophe in the picture where she's wearing the baseball cap. I don't know what it is about that picture but she just has a real Nophe look about her.
Haha - very amusing. Love the photo of Seb and Bel covering their ears - that shot says it all really! Hope you are surviving and still relatively sane!
Great blog - makes me hungry though!
Say hi to all ( not Neil - hes an idiot)
Love Dale II
Post a Comment