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bloocrab,
Thank you! Yes I had asked my dad first every trip and finally he wasn't busy and it happened to line up on the best conditions day of all the trips. I 100% agree with everything you said and that is how I fish for them, cut legs off and keep the shell on, it is great advice. If you have a good crew of guys onboard they can cut some legs before getting underway or during an approach and have some chum ready before anchoring.
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No shell crabs:
My son at 5 is a good fisherman already, some of our goals this year were to spend a lot of time working on casting and retrieving various lures and jigs.
Billy D (PBAdad) built him his first surf rod and we spent some time fishing bucktails, shad bodies and eels. He did fatigue a bit from the heavier surf setup vs. using a 2k or 3k sized freshwater outfit but I also limited those trips in regards to duration. He did well for seabass and scup from the boat but we could get away with lighter setups for those fish. For tog, I handed him a St. Croix tidemaster med heavy with a 4000 sized reel which I felt was a good choice because it has enough play to allow a fish to take a crab, turn and load the rod enough to engage the circle hook, and enough backbone that if he even got a turn in might save some hardware ...even if he was asleep at the reel or had too much slack line, my thinking was the fish might just hook itself, for him I used a 2/0 or 3/0 thin-wire circle. I also thought that if the fish could just engulf the offering without chewing (removed shell) he might hook more fish. He won't accept help during fishing so we talk a bit about previous trips on the way down and I ask him what went good / bad and use both as opportunities to teach. He caught 6 tog and lost 2 rigs due to fish burying them in the rocks on our last trip, if you ask him how many fish he caught he'll tell you "only one" because that was the one in the box. As he develops in strength and continues to fine tune his reaction time (especially considering tog) I'll switch him back to some type of J hook.
I'm very fortunate that he loves fishing as much as he does, under any conditions, and complains when we leave after 8 hours. Ice fishing is on deck, this will be his first Champlain ice trip this year, he might love ice fishing more than all other types of fishing.
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