We struck out on crabbing the other day when Nonni & Grandpa were in town, so I decided to book a house with crabbing & fishing literally in the back yard!
Unfortunately, we had a sick 3 year old this past week and it took forever to get her a Covid test to make sure it was just a cold. But Nonni & Grandpa had decided to skip this one just to be safe. (We were bummed and now I owe my mom a new birthday present/trip!)
The best part about this house was the dock in the back that was right on the canal and covered with awesome shade from two big trees. And the comfy chairs to sit in didn’t hurt either…
The house also came with all these crab pots - all you had to do was put bait in and drop into the canal! We were super excited to try out this low effort way of catching crabs.
I was really surprised how excited all three of the kids were to try fishing. One of our friends gave us a good set up for saltwater/canal fishing, but we caught absolutely nothing…. The kids did not seem to care!
I think Matt was most excited to get to try out his inflatable boat. We bought this shortly after we moved back to Houston in the first hurricane season – our flooded street escape vehicle. The canal was calm enough that it was fun to toot around in the inflatable boat.
The house also had a green light set up for night fishing, which is supposed to bring in the big fish! We still caught nothing but it sure looks cool! The one thing you did attract were about 1 million tiny crabs - they look super creepy skittering around under the surface.
Matt did not get enough boating time on the first day, so he took all of us out again. Apparently it’s much easier to row when he’s by himself…
The crab pots did an awesome job! We got some really big guys and enough to feed all of us. Though we need to find a better method for picking them up, these guys would not let go of my tongs!
Every time we’ve caught crab for the beach house, they’ve been turned into stuffed crabs. But we decided to try something new and grill the crabs! Which meant a bit of a learning curve for dispatching the crabs without boiling them and then prepping them for the grill.
But it was totally worth the extra effort! The only downside was that the boys loved the crab cooked this way, so now we had to share… :(
Someone looked a little rough when they got up this morning… Despite appearances - she slept great!
We were running low on chicken necks the last night, but threw the traps in anyways over night. We thought we might have enough crabs to take home for another meal.
But there was only one monster in there and he apparently decided to eat his brother once the chicken neck was gone. We read that was a danger with traps, but only after a few days. This guy went cannibal fast!!
Lucky for him, he got to go free since one monster isn’t enough to share. Try not to be so heartless next time, big guy…!