Crab Traps

My crab trap is basically just a larger version of the crawfish traps I made previously .

This time I got some larger gauge wire mesh out of a dumpster at a construction site, so it's better suited for bigger fish.

Things you need: wire cutters, wire, half-inch gauge wire mesh, paper, scissors.

Check out the photos for rough instructions on how to fashion it together. I'm using heavy duty stereo speaker wires as twist-ties to secure the edges and pieces of my trap together. Copper wire works well because it bends easily but stays tight. There are certainly other ways of doing it, but if you're making these things out of scrap materials you gotta go with what you got.

The trap in these photos only has one end with a cone shaped entrance. Due to not having enough mesh I had to fit the other end with a simple circular cut to cap it. That probably means it'll catch fewer crabs, but in Louisiana there's plenty of the little bastards crawling around.

Best way to catch crabs is to throw your trap out in the evening in a shallow waterway (lake, bayou, canal, calm ocean shore, rocky areas or around piers are really good. Let your trap sit overnight. Chicken is an excellent bait. Shrimp too. Fish heads work well. Really almost any meat will attract crabs. Pull it up in the morning and throw your catch in a bucket with some water in it.

I like to boil my crabs in hot pepper and lemons and eat them straight out of the shell with my hands. If you're fancy you can make crab cakes, gumbo, or whatever.



What's going on in this photo is that I've cut a half-circle out of paper (in order to make sure when I fold it that it fits well in the cylindrical body of the trap. If you want a mathematical formula, you should basically double the diameter of the trap's body and that's the diameter of the half-circle you'll want to cut out of the wire mesh.


Here I'm folding the straight bottom of the half circle in on itself. You fasten it together there to make the cone shape. Then you cut out a hole in the tip of the cone big enough for crabs to crawl through.


Here it is fit into the body of the trap. Ideally you'd put one of these in both ends, but I've only got one end fit like this on this here trap.


Close up of the twisted stereo speaker wires that hold the trap's parts together. I know it looks crappy, but it works well and is very durable.


Finished. Now all I need to do is cut a hole in the side to make a little hatch where I can put bait into it or take crabs out of it.