Sand crabs

[39NESP]

hi all any sandies getting caught in the broard water lately
cheers snap

[alleycat]

Today i was walking on Shorncliffe jetty with my wife when we saw an Asian fellow pull up a crab dilly, had a few little crabs in it and we watched to see if he put them back, but he put them in an esky, a lady nearby challenged him as well as myself, he showed us a crab checker he had bought from BCF, anyway it showed the crabs were legal but they looked tiny, it seems the legal size is 11.5 cm, i had to apologize to the man but seriously an 11.5 cm crab is tiny, never would i have thought it was legal, has the size been dropped because surely this cant be right.

[Dignity]

Today i was walking on Shorncliffe jetty with my wife when we saw an Asian fellow pull up a crab dilly, had a few little crabs in it and we watched to see if he put them back, but he put them in an esky, a lady nearby challenged him as well as myself, he showed us a crab checker he had bought from BCF, anyway it showed the crabs were legal but they looked tiny, it seems the legal size is 11.5 cm, i had to apologize to the man but seriously an 11.5 cm crab is tiny, never would i have thought it was legal, has the size been dropped because surely this cant be right.

For sandies it is but if I recall it's measured in the notch above the longest spines not the spines themselves, that can make huge difference.

[chris69]

Yer i got a seafood platter awhile back and i thought the crab on it was tiny had no meat in it i would have called it 14cm if that.

[Dignity]

Yer i got a seafood platter awhile back and i thought the crab on it was tiny had no meat in it i would have called it 14cm if that.

Yep, the measurement at the notch makes more sense as when I used to chase sandies I'd throw back legal ones as their spines were quite long but the crab was quite small. The 11.5 cm size though is too small. I've had to throw muddies back as they've been missing one of their spines, don't know how that happens but it was a bit too regular of an occurrence in the nthrn Pumicestone Passage area for a while.
With this rain we're getting, and the fact that last week I caught 2 muddies on soft plastics, I might get my pots out and have a go at them. It was weird, the flatties we were chasing were rather hesitant and we found long pauses of at least 3 seconds between twitches was the way to get them to bite and this was enough time for the muddies to try them, they were actively chewing on the plastics, I was using sardine and pilchard scent on the SP,s at the time.

[banshee]

Lot less confusing in NSW, we simply measure the carapace front to back.

[Dignity]

Lot less confusing in NSW, we simply measure the carapace front to back.

I was going to mention that but then I thought I'd better recheck my facts and have since forgotten about it. Your measuring devices are quite large, no doubt to keep those claws at a distance when measuring.

[Noelm]

A “just legal” crab is not worth keeping (in my opinion) unless I’m desperate, I never measure crabs, if they look small, back they go. Getting my bag limit is usually not that hard even keeping just the big ones.