UNC Sea Grant 



September, 1980 



(o9 

 :7/9 



NORTH C/Vt-INA STATE LIBRARY 

 SLEIGH 



N. C. 

 DOC 



MAN 19 1931 



Bridges steers his boat toward a prime crabbing spot 



Pots, peelers 

 And blue crabs 



The water still reflects the light from 

 the nearly full moon as Murray 

 Bridges, a crabber, starts the motor of 

 his 25-foot boat about 4:30 a.m. The 

 boat putters quietly out of its dock and 

 down the creek by his Collington 

 home, heading to the Roanoke Sound 

 for the first haul of the day. 



Bridges explains in his Outer Banks 

 accent that the old adage of the early 

 bird catching the worm is born out in 

 fishing. "I don't know why, but early in 

 the morning before dawn and at night 

 about dusk are the best times of the 

 day for fishing and crabbing," he says. 

 "You can't lie in bed all day if you 

 want to catch fish and make money. 

 That's what I have to keep telling my 

 boys." 



Bridges has been crabbing the 

 Roanoke Sound for the past eight 

 years. He mixes his crabbing with a lit- 

 tle shrimping in the summer and gill 

 netting in the early winter. But mostly 

 he crabs for hard crabs and "peelers" 

 (crabs about to shed their shells). He 

 crabs with wire-mesh pots or by drag- 

 ging the sound bottom with a net, as 

 he's doing this hot July morning. 



Bridges lets the boat idle as he tosses 

 the net and doors into the water. Next, 

 he gears the boat into a slow, forward 

 crawl, pulls out his thermos for a cup 

 of coffee, and settles back for some talk 

 about crabbing. 



Bridges admits that he didn't know 

 much about crabbing when he began. 

 He had spent his earlier years in the 

 Merchant Marines. But when he re- 



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