Delboy wants to have a few answers from you regarding this question about peeler crab. He has been fishing for many years and finds his top bait to be the peeler crab. Can you help him out?
There must be someone out there that can help? I have been sea angling for over 40 years and the best bait I have found is peeler crab. But finding them when they are about to peel is the tricky bit.
I have found thousands of shore crabs over the years but finding themready to peel is the hard bit!. Can you induce the peelers to peel byany means? ie popping them in the fridge for a time then bring them
in the warm or popping them in warmer waters, what is the secret andis how do you do it???.
I have caught more fish on peeler crab than any other bait. Bass loveit, dogfish howl for it, smooth hound snap at it, wrass whack it, rayrave it, flatty flap at it, Cod, whiting and pout gorge on it. Its agreat bait when you can get it, and its only certain times of theyear you can find them and fresh is best.
Any help will be greatly received.
Kind regards
Delboy!
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March 16, 2025 at 19:43
interesting comments. I too am surprised that no one has gone into removing the gland for commercial purposes. Peeler crabs fetch from 50p to over a quid each, so its not that there is no money in it. The demand is certainly there.
May 5, 2025 at 04:13
To be quite honest, from what I remember of the article (and it was some time ago!) I don’t think it was quite that complicated. It simply involved removing the gland that secreted the peel-counteracting hormone. Obviously, as anybody who uses peelers regularly will know, tempreture should make a difference and perhaps thats why the results were so poor. One thing that has puzzled me though, is that no commercial company ever hit on the idea and did any more research in an attempt to “farm” peelers using a similar method - or perhaps they did try and just kept it quiet because of the possible backlash from environmentalists. I have a rather large collection of old magazines stashed away and perhaps the article is there so I’ll have to see if I can find it.
May 4, 2025 at 19:07
Very interesting - most marine animals ( I have bred a few from prawns to seahorses) can be induced to breed by tweaking salinity and or temperature. I understand what you said above and the lack of delicate information is superb! but did those early experiments use salinity and temperature as a test base?
May 2, 2025 at 12:10
In theory crabs can be induced to peel and some research was carried out and published in Sea Angler in, I think, the late 70s. The theory is based on the fact that crabs produce the hormone that invokes a peel right throughout their lifespan and are only prevented from peeling by the production of a counteracting hormone. At the correct time for a peel, the organ that produces the counteracting hormone stops producing and the peeling process begins. The research was based on removing the organ that produced the counteracting hormone (which was fairly easy given where it was positioned in the crab’s body) however even by doing this it was still reported to be only 50% effective so it was likely that there were some other factors involved. Even in the 70s (when everybody was a lot less touchy / feely) the article caused an outcry amongst anglers as the removal of the organ on the crab rendered those crabs that didn’t peel as unable to live in the wild and for that reason alone I think, the idea died a death - certainly I’ve seen no other mention of it since. I’ve deliberately left out where the organs were placed just to prevent any bright spark trying the idea as to be quite honest it was pretty barbaric, but I thought it might be of interest, if for no other reason than to highlight the complexity of the process involved in getting a crab to peel!