Something to Dwell Upon: My Favorite Thing To Do In Hilton Head

Every summer when we visit my husband's family in Hilton Head, South Carolina, we have our list of favorite things to do - go boogie boarding at the beach (in addition to family-friendly waves, Coligny Beach has a great splash fountain for little ones, porch swings and a gorgeous stretch of sand), search for dolphins on Grandpa's boat, listen to Greg Russell sing in Harbor Town, shop at the outlets, and stop for ice cream at Hilton Head Ice Cream (where there is an unlimited topping bar). My personal favorite, though, is crabbing at the dock.

I love seafood, particularly fresh stone crab claws. As soon as we get settled into my inlaw's house, I anxiously await the time that we can head to the dock to set the crab trap. Fortunately, they keep fish heads in the garage freezer to use as bait. On our recent trip to Hilton Head, I decided I wanted the entire crabbing experience, with the help of my well-trained relatives.

To catch crabs, you need fish, but to catch fish, you need shrimp. The best time to shrimp and fish is two hours before and after low tide. We used a small net to catch shrimp (the smaller the net, the easier it is to handle, apparently). My brother-in-law demonstrated the technique for me, draping the net on his shoulder, putting a piece of it in his mouth and then casting it into the flowing water. The best kind of cast or throw is called a pancake, which looks exactly like it sounds - round and flat. You have greater odds of catching shrimp that way. Something must have been wrong with our net because we mainly threw tacos (where the net folds in half before hitting the water). We only caught a mud minnow and an oyster shell.

Luckily, cousins Julie and Bill caught a bunch of shrimp and shared their supply with us for fishing. According to Julie, there are different types of fish - small fish to use as bait for fishing and crabbing, fish you throw back because they aren't quite big enough to eat, and tasty meals like trout and red fish that are 15" or longer. We didn't catch any tasty meals, but we did catch enough bait to use in the crab trap for our visit. With visions of a chilled crab appetizer in my future, we retrieved my father-in-law's crab trap and stuffed as many small red fish as we could into it.

On our first night, there were 17 crabs in the trap. Sounds like the jackpot for a shellfish lover like me, but we don't keep the blue crabs and there were six of them (my father-in-law says they are too much work to eat). We only take one claw from each stone crab we catch, and if there are any with a claw missing, we toss them back in the water. Their claw will grow back to its full size within a year. It is against the law to remove a claw from stone crabs carrying babies (we had two with orange sponges underneath which meant they were soon-to-be moms). That left us with seven claws for dinner and they were mm-mmn good!