DIY - December 2009

Crab Wrangler

A length of multi-strand shark trace wire is used to form the snare.

A small bead enables the wire snare to be tightened firmly around the crab’s leg or body without permanently creasing the wire.

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It’s modelled on a crayfish snare, but is lighter and cheaper, and pretty easy to knock up. It has the advantage over a spear of not damaging the crab, so it holds together much better on the hook, and doesn’t get washed out when cooked. It also means you can return the crab unharmed if it is berried (carrying eggs).
You need to get a length of thin aluminium tubing from a hardware store. About 2.1m (7’) is a good length. Drill a small hole in one end of the pipe for tying off the line. I use multi-strand steel shark trace, but I’m sure thick monofilament (say 100kg and up) would do just as well.

Thread a marble-sized plastic bead on one end of the line. Pay the line through the tube, starting from the opposite end from the hole you’ve drilled, and add another bead. Then form a loop, which should be slightly larger than the crabs you intend to snare, and crimp or tie the trace off to the hole you’ve drilled.

Actually snaring the crabs takes a bit of practice, but brings rewards and is a lot of fun. The basic principle is to slip the noose under the crab’s legs – which usually won’t bother it too much – before tightening by pulling the tail end of the line. It helps if you have a bucket handy to drop the crabs into, because if you put them on the rocks they’ll usually sprint off to a nearby crevice, leaving you where you started.

If targeting red rock crabs for a feed, you can bind a piece of pillie to the end of the tube with bait-elastic and waggle it under their noses. They’ll usually clamber into the noose to grab it, making them an easy catch.

I got into using crabs for bait after finding snapper full of crab bits time and again; they are obviously an important part of the snapper diet. Better still, the pickers have trouble destroying them, but big snaps love them. A downside is that stingrays, octopuses, eels and sharks also love them, so use recurve hooks, to make releasing these ooglies a lot easier.

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