42 Grams – 52 Sports; Sport 5 – Crabbing
As sport 5 of the 52 I’m trying to complete I thought I’d try something outside the box. Now it’s fair to say that I’m not the worlds biggest fan of animal based sports, not because I disagree with them or due to any moral issue, I just don’t find them that interesting.
However, today was somewhat different, we; Abi, Calum and myself, headed to the Promenade Park in Maldon, Essex to enter ‘The 3rd Annual Maldon Crabbing Competition 2011′.
Crabbing?. Yes, quite.
The park is based on the Blackwater estuary but (potentially more importantly) it has what’s known as the boating lake, but which is also the place where a lot of crabs live. So we entered, for an incredible £1.50 each, the rules were simple, we had until 2pm to catch the heaviest crab possible and so we got our lines and our bait and set to it.
For some reason I find crabbing a lot more enjoyable than fishing, maybe it’s because I can actually catch crabs. We used chicken carcass which worked very well, and after 3 hours of crabbing in the lake and the muddy estuary…
Success! I caught around 10-15 but given that it was all about the heaviest one I put some back in the water. I took my crab to be weighed at the crabbing HQ and it weighed a gargantuan 42 grams.
Which isn’t great in the overall competition terms but I was happy with it. Between myself, Abi and Calum, Abi got 50 grams and Calum 35 grams. So I didn’t loose! Thankfully.
It was a lot of fun and I recommend everyone has a go, you just need a bit of string or fishing wire, a stone, a bucket and some bait. Google crabbing and you’ll find out where your nearest place is.
5 sports so far, 47 to go and I have no idea what the next one will be. Any ideas?
