Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

Crabbing.

When I was about fifteen years old I was old enough to be allowed to go off for a day either hunting or fishing. We lived about three miles from a place called Crow's Mill, on the Raritan river.

At Crow's Mill there was a low dock jutting into the river. This clock seems to have been made especially for loading bricks on schooners.

For the purpose of swimming and crabbing this dock suited the boys exactly.

Harry and Eugene Moss, Frazer Kempson, Rollo Plumley, my brother Bruyn and I often walked the three miles to this dock and spent the day at the dock.

Catching crabs is not a very high order of fishing, nor does it require much skill.

The tide in the Raritan rose and fell about five or six feet every day. Alongside the dock the mud was left exposed at low tide. At high tide the floor of the dock was about three feet above the water.

To catch crabs from the dock we furnished ourselves with about a peck of scraps of meat from the butchers.

The older the meat was within limits the better.

Arriving at the dock we placed about twenty lines over the sides, each having a piece of meat as large as a boy's fist and an iron bolt or piece of stone for a sinker. The bait was allowed to rest on the bottom, the upper end of the line being fastened to the top of the dock.

Some boy was detailed to go the rounds of these lines and at intervals pull them gently to the surface of the water.

If there was a crab clinging to the meat some other boy had to scoop crab and sinker and all into the net.

A crab net consists of an iron ring about a foot in diameter, mounted on a rake handle about six feet long with a net of heavy cotton cord having meshes about an inch square.

While some of the boys were attending the crab lines the other boys went in swimming off the end of the dock where their noise would not drive away the crabs. Crabs are not like trout. They will stand a lot of noise without going away.

We frequently caught a bushel basket of crabs on one tide.

The best time to crab is on a rising tide. At low tide one may sometimes get soft shell crabs at the bases of the piles of the dock.

At the base of every pile there is usually a ring- shaped depression in the mud. This is full of water.

A crab sheds its shell every so often and before the new shell forms the crab is covered only with skin. The crab may be fried and eaten, skin and all.

A soft-shelled crab is helpless until his hard shell forms and may be scooped out of the puddle in which he rests.

Soft-shell crabs do not eat, so one never catches one on a line.

Some seasons crabs were plentiful. Other seasons they were few or did not appear at all.

Why, I do not know.