Description
On this episode of MeatEater Sheds Luke McFadden guides us through his commercial crab fishing business, crabbing boats, and his home.
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Luke has worked Chesapeake Bay blue crabs out of Pasadena, Maryland, since he was 12, and he bought his own boat at 18. The tour starts with one of the biggest loads of his 11-season career going into a walk-in cooler, where live crabs keep for up to 7 days. His yard holds 1,500 crab pots, a 15,000-pound deckover trailer he caged in to haul them, a row of Yamaha two-stroke outboards, a 1930s Mercury Water Witch, two bags of Herter's foam duck decoys pulled from a dumpster, a Rotax-powered hovercraft, and a 20-foot aluminum johnboat called the limo. At the marina, Luke walks through the Southern Girl, a 1969 Trojan houseboat cut down into a crab boat and powered by a 375-horsepower Caterpillar 3208 diesel from 1973. Its stern rack swings on hinges made from railroad rail, and a homemade heater keeps the pot-dipping tank hot enough to kill algae and barnacles. In the shedding shanty, he shows how to spot a peeler crab by the faint red line on its swim fin, and why a soft crab has to come out of the water within about 2 hours of shedding. The tour ends with a 1957 Grumman hydrofoil painted in Blue Angels colors, the dragon boat he has had since he was 13, and his crab stand, Bodkin Point Seafood, built around a 41-foot Deltaville deadrise made for Harvey Corbin of Smith Island.
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Chapters:
0:00 The Biggest Crab Haul of His Career
1:57 Loading Live Crabs Into the Walk-In
3:46 The Purple Ranger, the Camper, and the Ice Boat
5:31 Building a Crab Business From Junk
7:04 Dumpster Duck Decoys and Old Outboards
10:10 1,500 Crab Pots and the Pot Trailer
12:09 A Hovercraft, the Limo, and a Stick-Steer Johnboat
14:30 The Southern Girl: A Houseboat Turned Crab Boat
18:42 How to Tell When a Blue Crab Will Shed
20:05 The Shop and a 1957 Grumman Hydrofoil
21:56 The Boat Where Crabbing Started
23:43 Bodkin Point Seafood Crab Stand