Shoal Bay Crabbing Mission!!

Even though, Shoal Bay is just a 10 minute drive from Darwin, it has plenty on offer for fisherman. Shoal Bay is excellent for crabbing, you’re guaranteed a good feed of mud crabs. If the mud crabs aren’t on there are heaps of barra to be caught live baiting, flicking hard bodies and soft plastics, or even catch them on the cast net. At low tide, heaps of sand bars appear and it’s a great place to bring a cricket set for a chilled day with family or friends.

Since we couldn’t launch at Buffalo Creek because of the low tide, we set off from Nightcliff at 8am and it was rough as guts, soaking all of us on the way. After the soaking, we set up 9 crab pots with chicken and mullet for bait and put them diagonally across the creek.

When we had left the pots for about 1 hour, the first pull we had a giant buck in the pot. We had it on the deck for 10 minutes because it was so active every time I tried to grab hold of it, it would just thrash is claws at me and almost bit me 10 times. Midway into our crabbing mission, Elias pulled up a pot with 6 mud crabs in it, 3 of those crabs were legal rusty males and 2 were legal jennies and 1 undersize male, so we had 5 more legal crabs in the Esky.

We went out to push the boat off the sand bar and when we were free I started the moter. We were floating down the river and Hayden couldn’t get back into the boat because it was too deep and she wasn't strong enough. It was 1.2m deep on the sounder in croc infested water so i was getting pretty worried but she finally got back up when I drove to the bank. She climbed up the bank and got back in all muddy and the boat got all dirty.

We brought home 10-15 crabs and cooked them up with my secret sauce. It was the best crab ever. Get yourself out to Shoal Bay, explore the nature of the Top End wild life and catch a big feed of mud crabs.