Crab traps

[fishingfanatastico]

I was down the river earlier on checking my traps and there were a few blokes hanging about looking for avaliable traps to obviously get their hands into. I gave them a warning and said if they check anybodys traps in the river they will get the hands choped off by the owners of the traps if caught and i said the same will happen if they ever check my traps they giggled but i said i am being serious. The other day my mate caught a lad in my traps as well and warned him if he goes in again he will go in the drink. Just warning lads who have traps in the wear beaware and check your traps regularly as possible as there are thieves who are hanging about trying to nick crab at any chance given out of traps.

 

[codnot]

hi m8

hi m8

i dont blame u m8 but did u no the old trap law the crab does not belong to u untill it is in your hand it is respect that thay dont touch them & r set the trap back but no body does that i think like u m8 in the drink with them haha:hallucine:

 

[sless]

its not just the wear
the crab wars have started in the tyne aswell

 

[zippie]

where abouts sless???

 

[Stephen]

where abouts sless???

he just told you the tyne

 

[The man from the prom]

crabs

crabs

you should not of warned them but give them a good bath it starts every year some of these lads break thier backs grafting cleaning traps renewing traps to find another type of skum in them

 

[treeboa]

unfortunatly a country wide problem, totally agree with the bath sentiments, though if someone wished to add a few personal use traps in the area i dont think there should be a problem, unfortunatly its a couple of bad apples that spoil any relationships, over here on merseyside we have some good razor beds, after i mentioned about using salt to get the buggers to come up i was told dont bother if the EDIT are working the area, they will decend on it as soon as your backs turned

 

[insanojackson]

I think you are out of order mate, I respect people crab traps but until the crabs are in your hand/bucket they are not yours. They are fair game to anyone. The blokes might not have even been hanging around for crabs?


Its not clever threatening people, you may even threaten the wrong person one day and end up in the drink yourself!

 

[insanojackson]

unfortunatly a country wide problem, totally agree with the bath sentiments, though if someone wished to add a few personal use traps in the area i dont think there should be a problem, unfortunatly its a couple of bad apples that spoil any relationships, over here on merseyside we have some good razor beds, after i mentioned about using salt to get the buggers to come up i was told dont bother if the EDIT are working the area, they will decend on it as soon as your backs turned

EDIT I think you are being a touch racist there mate, not really an acceptable term to use in the 21st century!

 

[KeithB]

EDIT I think you are being a touch racist there mate, not really an acceptable term to use in the 21st century!

Quite right mate, I've edited the posts.

 

[mark]

"My Crab Traps" - cracks me up every time I hear it

If I see an environmental health hazard, sorry I mean minging old tyre, sorry I mean crab trap, anything thats in it belongs to no man.

If you are so believeing in that you own the crap you are dumping in the river. Stick your name in it, indelibly, and you're address, on a permanently fixed label that is clear for all to read. People that might want to see whats in them, or the port of tyne authority, or the environment agency perhaps

and then to threaten someone who you suspect might be looking in them - what kind of stupidity is that??

almost as bad as the jokers who guard there traps like they are children and claim they work hard to maintain them, because of the commercial value they can extract by selling the crabs... whoa hang on, commercial value?? you licence then?? you declaring all this to the tax man?? or worse still, the dole.

I nearly came to blows last month with one such imbecile. low tide, northshields, on the beach with the dog and the bairns , and they are investigating some minging old tyre, when I hears the tirade of abuse and threats being hurled at an 8 year old boy by a fully grown man, for going near "His Traps" FFS!

 

[Stores]

It's funny isn't it, I've read the same discussions about traps on all the local web site threads, about potential violence, about "my" traps and about outsiders invading them.....yet I've yet to read any thread that likens the use of traps to "catch" crab with the use of a net across a given stretch of water to "catch" fish. The latter is despised by all shore anglers as a cheating way to catch fish and deplete stocks, yet it's OK to attract peelers into tyres so as to take them every tide, not necessarily to fish with but to horde away for the rest of the year, continually depleting their stocks.
I know I live 200 miles away but I've never in my life entertained the idea of putting tyres or metal sheets or anything else down to up the number of crabs I can catch.
Surely the rule should be that the person most skilled at getting bait should catch the most. I bet there's a lot of you out there who would baulk at the idea of putting your arm under some skeer and use your skill to get your fingers behind some big carrier, turn him around and be able to catch the hen if she runs for it. I've seen the guys in their marigolds and their scrapers trying to get into holes and they don't catch as many as me. The thing is I don't catch as many as you with your tyres, nor do I want to. Surely you should get enough for a session and allow the rest to turn and get some more when needed. I know all the arguments about time and work and tides and the dark but surely that's part of the deal - sometimes low water at night or a small tide gives the crabs a chance. To me the tyres take all the skill and effort and, unfortunately, knowledge of the seashore out of it.

I could live with them all being banned or you all fighting amongst yourselves.

 

[Charlton]

here we go again, not long since this thread was mentioned. what the trappers dont realise and what i have pointed out before is, that you are preventing the crabs from going into naturally form hiding places that anglers for many years have collected crabs from. In other words tou are taking everone elses crabs and claiming them as yours. I used to have tyres in the Blyth and Tyne, mind this was a necessity to enable me to get a bit of bait because of the number of anglers putting traps out i could not get many from the natural traps. If i found someone in my traps, there is absolutely no question of me stopping them, they are not my crabs, they belong to everyone. Only arguement i ever had was when a couple of anglers who had loads of tyres out tried to chase me from the Blyth as i had not been for eighteen month through a bad knee injury through rugby. They soon got the message. Many locals have been collecting crabs from natural traps in all the rivers before tyres etc where thought of, you may by all means put traps out to make your life easier but do not claim the crabs as yours.

 

[treeboa]

EDIT I think you are being a touch racist there mate, not really an acceptable term to use in the 21st century!

your right, however the fact remains that the one day in question there we upwards of 40 chinese hitting the beach, all towing 5 gallon plus containers, every good low tide its the same and the e.a cant do jack crap about it because the same excuse is being used-personal consumtion, when i spoke to a couple of guys about using salt to bring the razors up i was told dont, you do as soon as your backs turned then the edit will take the area over, me personally i wanted 10 to go fishing with, not gallons of the things

to go back to the crab traps, on many beaches the natural traps are gone or few and far between so tyres etc have to be put out, i know a few anglers, note the word anglers not bait collectors , who have traps out, they dragged the tyres and chains to moar them with yet scum who cant be bothered feel they have the rights to take, no different to stealing the flowers from your garden that you or your wife have worked over for months, or following you around while bait digging and grabbing the worms you have dug before you can grab them, i can imagine a few chopped off fingers and `sorry old chap`, i well remember as a kid putting lay lines out on the beach to supliment the family food, then seeing thieving scum wading out so they could take what we had caught on the lines, end of the day we did all the work and purchased the line and hooks and they took the benifits, well once they did, next time they took bruises home and our lines were left in future

 

[insanojackson]

your right, however the fact remains that the one day in question there we upwards of 40 chinese hitting the beach, all towing 5 gallon plus containers, every good low tide its the same and the e.a cant do jack crap about it because the same excuse is being used-personal consumtion, when i spoke to a couple of guys about using salt to bring the razors up i was told dont, you do as soon as your backs turned then the edit will take the area over, me personally i wanted 10 to go fishing with, not gallons of the things

to go back to the crab traps, on many beaches the natural traps are gone or few and far between so tyres etc have to be put out, i know a few anglers, note the word anglers not bait collectors , who have traps out, they dragged the tyres and chains to moar them with yet scum who cant be bothered feel they have the rights to take, no different to stealing the flowers from your garden that you or your wife have worked over for months, or following you around while bait digging and grabbing the worms you have dug before you can grab them, i can imagine a few chopped off fingers and `sorry old chap`, i well remember as a kid putting lay lines out on the beach to supliment the family food, then seeing thieving scum wading out so they could take what we had caught on the lines, end of the day we did all the work and purchased the line and hooks and they took the benifits, well once they did, next time they took bruises home and our lines were left in future

Its is different ! The flowers would be your property and are capable of being stolen/damaged as far as the law is concerned.

The crabs are not your property until you reduce them into your possession i.e pick them up.

Oh and also by dumping tyrs etc etc on the foreshore you are comitting an offence of littering and spoiling the environment. So as far as crap traps go the only person comitting an offence is the person who put the things there in the first place!

 

[Stores]

I still think the main issue is the decimation of the crabs. In the old days (God I seem to be saying that a lot these days) no-one fished with crabs in the winter because they weren't available. That meant that only a limited amount of crab were taken in season - the rest survived. Now we seem to take thousands to keep us going through the winter. Everyone seems to use peeler all the time when you talk to them. Regardless of who the trap belongs to the fact that they are there means more people have access to them.
Treeboa what do you mean about natural traps disappearing? Surely the natural habitat for crab is under rocks and in the weir. They certainly haven't changed in the last 40 years.

 

[red rock]

i bust a gut putting the traps in i have and do it every year,there is plenty of mud so if people want their own crab do the work too.

 

[davem2005]

Stores,
Not many months ago the NESFC had a proposal submitted to ban the collecting of crabs on the foreshore. This proposal was defeated by the RSA regional representative on the grounds that studies show that the crabs are as plentifull as ever...and long may it continue.

Cheers
Dave.

 

[Stores]

I think that's really interesting Dave. I'd be really interested to see their brief for making that decision. If they think there are as many crabs, not just peelers, in areas like Cullercoats Harbour or Sharpness then they are, imho, way off the mark. As for the river estuaries I could not make a comment other than to say that we MUST take more now than in the past.
I also am not advocating a ban on bait collection. It just seems that technology now means we can freeze successfully one of our most effective baits so that is what everyone wants to do - perhaps I would be at it 2 tides a day if I lived closer - it would be ironic would it not if, through the Marine Bill, we eventually improved shore fishing only to find that there was little feed on the shore to sustain fish.

 

[treeboa]

stores, to answer your question, i dont know about the north east marks but on the wirral side of the mersey and in some places in north wales they have put in groynnes to bring back the sand and to ease storm damage, however being an old arse i can remember what the beaches were like and they are nothing like they were even 12 years ago, a lot of the places i used to collect crabs are now under sand, yes the groynes will hold the crabs but no way can you move a couple of ton rocks to reach them, changing the flow down the beach has decimated some once very productive bait beds, in one place i have recently noticed a deep gully, not bad in some ways, untill you walk out to it and the sand is totaly missing and the gully base is pure clay, talking to my youngest son about it he says this gully moves so in this it is constantly to my mind ripping out an area where worm can never live or breed, walking the dog today one area where the other week i could have just cast into at high water is now well out of reach