Best Crab Bait???

[TheProvider]

Secret recipies please.. fish, fish heads, wet dog food, mother inlaws annoying poodle....?

[BiG Boar]

Chicken. Unless its duck season.

[Fred1]

Can of tuna... use it to catch the cat that keeps shitting in your flowers... use cat to ....... :wink:

[Salty]

A fresh carcass of a fish that you've caught and cut the fillets off of in nearby waters. ya chicken and cat food and road kill works but nothing like fish heads/carcasses.

[Ambush]

Adrian Dix.

[warnniklz]

Fish carcass or chicken soaked in Pautzke crab fuel... Done deal

[The Dawg]

Used to use dogfish. Worked a treat

[40incher]

Moose or beef liver in wire mesh.

[Salty]

Another thing is how to bait. Loose the plastic bait holders. I mean if all you have is a tin of cat food or a bit of chicken fine but if you want to catch a lot of crabs you need a good sized trap and real edible bait secured to the floor in the middle with wire, zip ties whatever. Don't have any too close to the outside or they will feed from outside. When the first couple crabs get in there and start chowing down sending scent and noise everywhere their buddys will come running. Think a tin with holes in it and a chunk of meat and a few crows and a blue jay pecking at it. Or a gut pile being devoured by all kinds of critters with more on the flanks looking to get in. Same kind of deal at the bottom of the sea.

[BigfishCanada]

If you use fish, over chicken which is what I like, you end up getting seals messing with your traps, because of that Id suggest rotten chicken

[Salty]

Hmm, never had a seal mess with a trap mind you i use heavy stainless commercial style. Seals have been known to eat decomposing human bodies so I don't think the rot idea would help if that was ever an issue. The other thing is things don't rot per se in the sea I'm not a fan of anything but fresh fairly natural bait. YMMV

[MB_Boy]

My take is.......in a cage bait holder......FRESH turkey or chicken backs. They are cheap as hell.....and they draw them in something fierce.

<I should add.....we have bought 5 litre pails of "fish oil" from a processing plant and added that to both crab and prawn bait and it is a hot damn!! Our problem in using in consistently is being lazy as to who is going to drive out and get it.>

After years of crabbing they have worked wonders for us. In sayin that though we have dropped traps in English Bay....zipped into Sandbar and had appetizers (and pints) while the traps soaked. We had a "rookie" buy the bait one year and there wasn't enough to do a second drop; we used all the leftovers including pizza, wing bones, rib bones and calamari just for kicks and in a hour after the first pull we had 5 more keepers to round out 5 limits.

I have heard halibut carcusses work well.....or salmon heads but I also wonder about the attraction for seals. We've never had a trap ripped apart by one......just poached by unscrupilous idiots but I saw this video the other day that made me wonder. I always mean to keep fish parts to try but always forget as my usual bait always works just fine.


Wait till 3:55 and see "who" comes to investigate. Looking at the bait I would assume it is fish as it pulls apart like halibut rather than chicken.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBYyklFhq08

[adriaticum]

Everyone here uses chicken.

[sniper ren]

Fresh salmon skeleton/head and prawn heads worked great for us today!

[warnniklz]

<I should add.....we have bought 5 litre pails of "fish oil" from a processing plant and added that to both crab and prawn bait and it is a hot damn!! Our problem in using in consistently is being lazy as to who is going to drive out and get it.>


Like I said Pautzke crab fuel

[MB_Boy]

Like I said Pautzke crab fuel

Haha.....didn't know what it was called; other than it stinks like crap and when it's on my hands it makes my beer taste dizzzguzzzting after loading up the traps. :wink:

I just know be bought it at some fish plant out in Surrey and his truck always smelled like arse as he always lost the bet as to who picked it up.

[warnniklz]

http://www.pautzke.com/products_scents_crabfuel.php

it's all the run off from fish/crab processing plant with ground up shells, guts, gills and what not

[huntcoop]

Chicken backs or cat food but chicken backs seems to work best.

[Johnny G1]

Adrian Dix. That's fine as long as you don't want to eat the crabs later.

[russm]

Chicken, the last time we used salmon we had a deal doing a circuit between our traps eventually gave up and fed it the rest of the bait at the side if the boat.

[Ozone]

mother inlaws

This would work

[Wild one]

Salmon & chicken

[springpin]

My ex wife!

[Paulyman]

Cheap cologne and a new haircut. go hang out at any bar in Surrey and you should have success.

[genockous]

A couple surrey girls

[r106]

Kfc............

[warnniklz]

Cheap cologne and a new haircut. go hang out at any bar in Surrey and you should have success.

Sad thing is... You don't even have to try that hard.

[steel_ram]

An old ham bone in a running shoe.

[Paulyman]

Omg, that is funny s hit right there, I assume you are referring to picking up Surrey girls?.
An old ham bone in a running shoe.

[Fred1]

Omg, that is funny s hit right there, I assume you are referring to picking up Surrey girls?.

Now that right there is funny!!!

[slayer B]

Nothing beats salmon heads, I've got my limit in 15 mins before fishing off a dock with 2 traps. One had 25 in it ( five keepers) and the other had 6 or 7 (1 keeper). Although to be fair it usually took me closer to a half hour to 45 mins to limit out.

[pronghorn]

Chicken left in the sun for a couple hours or a dead seagull if you can find one.

[longstonec]

Never had problems with seals, have caught a couple river otters though! hard to get the trap over the side of the boat with a 65lb otter in it.

Oilier bait is better but most anything will work. Depending on the length of soak i will use plastic bait containers, or bait strapped into the middle, or both. I never have a shortage of fish skeletons so thats what I usually use. I prefer salmon heads. will usualy stuff some guts into the plastic bait container.halibut works fine, rock cod, cat food($$), oreo cookies, tuna(sept thats $$) even hand full's of muscles off the side of the dock. Use whatever you got. Add a couple funny coloured zap straps to the main opening so that you can tell if your traps been pulled, ( what are the chances that Joe Dickhead has 5 red and 9 pink zap straps in his pants )

[Salty]

I don't get this idea that rotten or decomposing bait is a good idea. Nothing rots in the ocean, it decomposes differently without oxygen and in a salt solution, or more likely is consumed right away by microscopic and bigger creatures. Plus I'm not big on eating a crab who's last meal was rotten meat.

[2tins]

They are hard to catch and they have a terrible bite but if you can catch 'em..............pit bulls.

[Paulyman]

Or trolls,they make good crab bait.

[slayer B]

I got a book called How to catch Crabs by Charlie White. I recommend you check it out. Lots of good tips and tricks but one thing he stresses is that non marine and old rotting bait will attract crabs but usually the smaller ones and females. He recommends fresh bait like fish carcasses, clams or herring in a bait cage work good too. Large male crabs like to eat the good stuff so be ready to give it to them. Happy crabbing and don't forget the garlic butter!

[40incher]

How about a 127 cm. or larger halibut after April 1st? They'll be crab bait after they are released with a hook in their gut anyways.

[ratherbefishin]

personally I would prefer pimps,[everybody has a purpose in life] but the very best bait I've used is chicken bones

[steel_ram]

Apparently Chinook heads aren't as good as other species'. They do have a unique strong scent. Might be more BS from an Ol'timer, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

[MillBay]

No magic bullet here except "FRESH" never reuse bait and all bait fishes out after couple of hours, if you don't believe that pull your traps and try reusing it.
Beef fat, port fat, chicken fat/backs , fish frames (Better than fish heads, more surface exposed). Roe even fresh prawn heads work well.

[IronNoggin]

In order of Preference based on repetitive catch rates:

Tuna Frames - Incredible Oil Slick they will track down for a considerable distance.

Halibut Frames - Large exposed surface areas, draws them in and holds them.

Rockfish Frames - Close to the same as halibut.

Salmon Heads - Watch out for furry trap wreckers!

Chicken Backs.

Use all FRESH! We've found the older it is, the less it will produce.

Cheers,
Nog

[Salty]

I agree with Nog's take above on all counts. Another one I'd add in there is dogfish (mud sharks) and rate them probably right under rockfish. Tie them in whole or a piece of a big one if they won't fit. Make sure to slit their bellies to get the oil slick going. Always make sure any bait is secured and in the middle of the trap so the crabs can't feed from the outside of the trap elsewise they won't bother going in.

[Confused]

Interesting stuff, what do the commercial guys use? Surely they have it figured out for best results and efficiency. I would think that they leave their traps down for extended lengths of time???? One guy told me that they actually use mink carcasses form mink farms?????????

[Salty]

Interesting stuff, what do the commercial guys use? Surely they have it figured out for best results and efficiency. I would think that they leave their traps down for extended lengths of time???? One guy told me that they actually use mink carcasses form mink farms?????????

The commercial guys I know of use fish carcasses; that they get from processing plants for the most part. Yes the traps stay down for days at times due to storms, laziness. lol. or just the sheer number of traps they tend and the time it takes to do a circuit. Most of the crabs will be caught in short order.. hours not days.

[ActionJackson017]

Confused - I'm guessing (given first hand experience being on deck with Nog) that his list is pretty much what the commercial guys use... Nog is a pure bred killer while out on the ocean, any advice he gives I tend to pay attention to.

[MillBay]

"I would think that they leave their traps down for extended lengths of time???? "

I believe the commercial guys are limited to how many times they can pull thier traps in a week. Not everyone has Tuna and Halibut frames in thier freezer thats why I use Fat and c hicken, and we eat lots of crabs.

[Keta1969]

Was talking to a guy a couple of years ago who had leased out his boat to an outfitter for bear hunting around Knights Inlet.He has fished a lot of crab in the past but said he's never seen anything like the results they got with bear meat!!!!

[1980skywalker]

I second the bear meat bait, tried it a few weeks ago in sidney, could only leave the trap down for 15minutes. Much more than that and the crabs had eaten all the bait, needless to say we caught our limit in short order. I also had halibut and salmon carcasses in another trap and chicken in a third, the bear worked the best by far!