Fiddler crabs 🦀
 

Saw fiddler crabs 🦀 in the salt marsh near Atlantic City yesterday afternoon. https://youtube.com/shorts/JF-3dumSuLM

Re: Fiddler crabs 🦀
 

Very cool.

Re: Fiddler crabs 🦀
 

Bait

Re: Fiddler crabs 🦀
 

Like to have a cooler of them in April

Re: Fiddler crabs 🦀
 

Cut my teeth fishing for Blackfish with Fiddlers on the Raritan Bay rock piles. Not sure why no one carries them anymore, they're bite size Blackfish candy!

Re: Fiddler crabs 🦀
 

They've been ousted up here by asian crabs

Re: Fiddler crabs 🦀
 

When I lived in Bayonne (mid 1990s-2010) there was a mud flat/marsh next to the golf course that at low tide you could catch all the fiddlers you wanted (along with Asian crabs). Not only to they make great blackfish bait but sea bass love them just as much.

I also recall that the Fisherman's Den in Belmar used to sell them by the pint/quart in Chinese take out containers. Used to buy a quart or 2 and hammer the blackfish in the Canal. Last summer, I tried calling various tackle shops to see if any still sold them and the only one that said they do is Scott's in Tuckerton but when i called they said they didn't have any at the moment.

Re: Fiddler crabs 🦀
 

When I was a kid my Grandfather and I fished the North Fork of Long Island. The fishing station would lower a 16 ft Aluminum rental skiff down the side of a hillside with us in it on a small short railroad track into the L.I Sound. No joke this is real. All we would use for bait was fiddler crabs and we would do real good. No fish finder just some land marks and a skiff and drop anchor and catch blackfish. That's my memory of fiddlers! tight Lines.

Re: Fiddler crabs 🦀
 

Fiddler crabs used to be the go to bait and were fairly inexpensive. From shore, the Pt. Pleasant canal and off the rocks at Manasquan and Shark River inlet were incredible. You wouldn't believe on such a small bait the size blackfish we caught growing up in the canal. Like Skolmann said, you'd buy a pint or quart size like in a Chinese take out and when the tide wasn't ripping you'd have non stop action and unlike the smaller black fish caught today there were routinely bruisers taken in the canal.