By JOHN H. OSWALD • STAFF WRITER • August 1, 2008
The calico crab was angry. It was in the basket at the end of the rake with its claws pointing skyward, looking for a finger to bite.
"See how feisty he is?" said "Bucktail" Bob Hopkins of West Allenhurst.
"I can tell you right now, without even touching him, he's no good."
No good?
According to Hopkins, if the crabs were energetic, they would be hard shelled and no good for striper fishing. It was just one of the secrets I would learn that evening.
So began the lesson.
Actually, it began several weeks earlier when Hook, Line & Sinker writer John Geiser told a tale of the pleasures of fishing for stripers on warm July evenings with calico crabs.
It sounded great.
I'm a big fan of warm July evenings and had fished with soft-shelled blue claws for stripers before.
While a bit expensive, they always seemed to work.
A guy I used to run into on the beach in Sea Bright fished almost exclusively with soft blue claws, claiming that to a striped bass, they tasted just like ice cream.
How he knew such information was never clear to me.
At any rate, it was July, there were stripers around, and all I needed was calico crabs.
Therein lies the problem. Fishing with calico crabs is not for the faint of heart. It requires some effort.
Nobody sells them. So to get them, you have to rake them. And that sounds like work to me.
Not only did I have to rake them, I had to find a rake, learn how to use it and know what to look for in a crab. All that was before you even went fishing.
It seemed like a complicated task for a simple mind such as mine.
First thing was to find the rake. Not too many places sell those either, and they aren't cheap once you locate one.
Before I made the big investment, I thought I'd take a suggestion from Bob Mathews at Fishermen's Den in Belmar who said a clam rake fitted with window screening over the basket would make a workable substitute.
So armed with my clam/crab rake contraption, I ventured into the surf at low tide in Bradley Beach — the only time you can rake crabs — in search of soft or shedding calicoes.
I waded out until the water was up to my waist, dropped the rake into the sand and dragged it backward toward shore with the long handle up over my shoulder. When I flipped the rake over, all I had was an empty basket and a slight pull in my lower back.
Several more passes produced a couple of crabs, all hard shelled, and I had torn the screening on my rake.
Undeterred, I returned the next day with a repaired rake and had much better luck. The rake worked and I got some crabs, but even better, I found a genuine crab rake.
David Schechner, a lifelong resident of Bradley Beach, happened to be watching me.
Turns out he raked crabs as a kid and sold them early in the morning to fishermen at Kelly's Bar in Neptune. He gave me a few pointers, such as raking parallel to the shore.
He also put me in touch with his cousin, Peter Lowy, who still had one of the rakes his family used many years ago.
This rake was the real deal, made in the 1930s with long, sharp steel tines and a wire basket. He was kind enough to lend me this heirloom as I continued my pursuit of calico crabs.
What I really needed now was someone who knew what they were doing. Not only was it necessary to rake the crabs, but to know if they were any good. They are often in different stages of the shed and some make better baits than others.
And that is how I came to know "Bucktail" Bob Hopkins, by way of an introduction from John Christenson of Scott's Bait and Tackle in Bradley Beach.
Hopkins is known for his skill bucktailing for bass in the surf.
However, in the last couple of years, he was looking for a new tactic to catch bass when things slowed down during the summer. That's when Brian Zimmerman, formerly of Steve's Bait and Tackle in Long Branch, suggested he try raking calico crabs.
"They are deadly this time of year," Hopkins said. "You'll catch bass when everybody else isn't even getting a bite."
Stripers are rooting around in the sand for them, attracted by the scent.
I met Hopkins at a location that must remain secret on pain of death. He had agreed to teach me how to rake crabs and try for some bass as long as I remained tight-lipped. He even kept his promise after I backed into his truck. He looked at me hoping I raked better than I drove.
After we inspected for damage, we headed to the beach, rakes in hand.
In addition to his rake, Hopkins brought a netted shoulder bag and a neoprene glove.
The bag was for the crabs we caught and the glove was for the crabs that bite — and that was most of them. He also wore surf shoes for protection from those underfoot.
The evening was perfect: Clear blue skies, low humidity and the tide was just hitting dead low. We set to work right away.
Hopkins waded into the little cove, set his rake into the sand and started pulling at a steady pace toward the beach. I did likewise just a few feet away. We were in luck and started turning up crabs in our rakes almost immediately.
This was where Hopkins' expertise really came into play.
Only soft, shedder, paperback and tinback calicoes work as bait. It's relatively easy to tell the soft, paperback and tinback crabs from the hard ones.
The real trick is in spotting the shedders.
"You have to look around the edges of the the claws and the body. When you see the dark purple color, they are getting ready to shed," Hopkins said.
When we came across a potential shedder, Hopkins grabbed the crab in his gloved hand and broke off the tip of the claw. If there was a soft shell underneath, we were in luck.
"Another indication that the crab is about to shed is that it is a little less active. Now that it's getting ready to shed, it's not as energetic as hard shell crabs " he said.
After about 40 minutes, we had about 10 crabs in the bag, a good mixture of soft, tinback, paperback and shedders. Hopkins said we were pretty lucky.
"I've raked for more than an hour sometimes with just a couple of crabs to show for it," he said.
He also said that he only takes as many as he's going to use for that night's fishing.
"They're only good for 48 hours. It's also important to protect this resource," he said. "I don't rake in the same area right away to give it time to recover. He also talked about the etiquette of raking, that if someone is already raking when he gets to a spot, he'll move on.
Time to fish
With the crabs collected, we moved on to the main event.
"I smell bass," Hopkins said.
Our rods were rigged with fishfinder rigs and 5/0 Gamagatsu baitholder hooks and two-ounce storm sinkers. Conditions dictate how much weight to use and the surf was a little high on this night.
"I keep the rod in my hands, not in a sand spike," Hopkins said. "When the fish hits, I can set the hook so the fish doesn't swallow the bait. This way I can avoid gut-hooking the fish."
Also, if the rod is unattended, when the strike comes, the rod may disappear into the surf.
And these fish do hit.
Hopkins rigged the crabs by first removing the claws and the apron on the underside of the body. He then wraps elastic thread from the back toward the front on a diagonal, five or six turns on each side and not too tightly. Wrapping the thread too tightly will distort the shape of the crab.
He then inserts the hook into the back edge of the crab under the thread. Hopkins noted that there are several ways to rig the crabs and that some anglers leave the claws intact and just pass the thread over the claws to keep them close to the body.
I tossed my first offering just about 30 yards off the beach into the breaking waves. The bait barely hit bottom before something was gnawing on it. The crabs, obviously, taste like ice cream to everything because this wasn't a bass.
My second crab was cast was further down the beach. The wait wasn't long. The fish hit the crab like it was picking up takeout at a drive through without stopping the car. It made a short, powerful run, stopped to get its breath then started again. After a couple of more brief bursts, the fish came to the beach. The bass was short but full of fight and quickly released.
"That was a bucket bait," Hopkins said. "You don't get to sit on the bucket before a
fish bites," he explained.
We then moved a little south to one of Hopkin's favorite spots close to a jetty. Before too long, he had landed and released two more bass and missed a third that leapt straight out of the surf.
"I'd put that one at 15 to 20 pounds," he said.
We called it a day when the light was just about gone. And a great day it was.
It turned out to be one of those memorable warm July evenings John Geiser wrote about. And Hopkins, a retired state worker, Vietnam vet and passionate fisherman, was an excellent and patient teacher. He also is a very nice guy with a great sense of humor.
I believe calico crabs work equally well on warm August evenings and I think I'll be raking again.
With his trusted rake, Bob Hopkins explains the strategies behind fishing for stripers with calico crabs. (STAFF PHOTOS: DOUG HOOD)
A crab rake basket full of calico crabs that have passed the test for striper bait.
