Crabbing times
Crabbing times on the North Norfolk coast
Crabs feed on the rising tide, so the best hours are the ones before high water. This week's tides at five quays between Brancaster Staithe and Cromer, and the best place to drop a line each day.
This week's best sites
Crabbing is governed by the sea: you need water against the quay wall, and that comes and goes twice a day. The best quay for each day, with the crabbing window: from three hours before high water, when the tide is coming in and the crabs are feeding, to an hour after, in daylight. If the quays are only full at dawn or after dark, the pier at Cromer works at any state of tide.
Family hours count as 10am to 6pm, and a quay filling through them beats one draining through them. Don't bother at low water: the crabs are in the mud. Windows are a guide, not a promise: a strong northerly holds water up, a southerly pulls it away, and the sea is in charge.
What to bring
Everything you need is sold on the quay for a few pounds. Buy it there: it keeps the huts going, and the bait is fresher than anything that came in a parcel. Round here, by the way, it's called gillying, and the crabs are gillies.
A line, not a hook
A drop line with a weight and a bait bag. No hooks. The crab holds on because it wants the bacon, not because it's caught.
Where to buy one on the quay →A bucket of seawater
Fill it from the harbour, not the tap, and keep it in the shade. A dozen crabs in a warm bucket is a dozen unhappy crabs.
Buckets at the village stores →Bacon or fish
Bacon rind is the classic. The huts sell bait in bags. Whatever you use, tie it in the net so it stays put.
Bait from the huts on Wells quay →On Wells quay the huts by the harbour office have lines and bait from Easter to October. At Blakeney the village stores and the hotel shop do the same, and at Burnham Overy and Brancaster Staithe ask at the boatyard.
The quays, one by one
Where to stand, when it dries, and what to watch on each one.
Wells-next-the-Sea quay
The reference everything else is measured against. The wall by the Albatros end holds water for a good while after the others have gone to mud. "Watch the ladders. The crabs live round them, and so do the boats coming alongside."
Lines and bait: the huts along the quay. Shops on Wells quay →
Directions → Park on the quay or at the Buttlands and walk down.
Blakeney quay
A small quay with a lot of crabs. It empties completely at low water, so the window really is the window. The edge has no rail along most of it; small children want a hand on them. "When Blakeney's dry, so is Morston. Don't bother driving round."
Lines and bait: the village stores, the hotel shop. Shops in Blakeney →
Directions → Quay car park fills by late morning in summer.
Burnham Overy Staithe
The staithe fills later than Wells and empties faster. Stand on the hard by the boatyard, not on the marsh side, which is soft. "The creek runs quick on the ebb here. Keep the bucket back from the edge."
Ask at the boatyard. Shops near Burnham Overy Staithe →
Directions → Roadside only, and not much of it.
Brancaster Staithe
A proper working staithe with the mussel and oyster boats coming and going. Good crabbing off the hard when there's water, and a lot to look at when there isn't. "Give the fishermen room. They're on the same tide you are, and they've got less of it."
Ask at the boatyard. Shops at Brancaster Staithe →
Directions → Harbour parking; keep clear of the slip.
Cromer pier
Not a quay: a pier over open sea, so there is always water under you. Drop the line from the side rails, not the end where the lifeboat is. When the harbour quays are only full at dawn or dusk, this is the answer. "Longer line. It's a long way down."
Lines and bait: the kiosks on the front. Shops on Cromer seafront →
Directions → Town car parks, then a short walk to the front.
What's in the bucket
Three crabs you'll meet on this coast. One of them is in nearly every bucket on the quay; one is the reason Cromer is famous; one has red eyes and a temper.
Shore crab
Carcinus maenas
The one on the end of your line. Green when it has just moulted and living up in the weed; orange or red when it has kept the same shell for longer. Red ones have thicker armour and are bolder, which is why the biggest one in the bucket is usually red.
Tough as anything: it lives in water that swings from full sea to nearly fresh twice a day, and a young one can last days out of water in damp weed.
- Size
- Up to about 9cm across
- Lives
- Around 5 years, sometimes more
- Tell it by
- Five teeth along each side of the shell front
Brown crab
Cancer pagurus, the Cromer crab
The edible one, landed by the boats you'll see at Wells and Cromer. Reddish brown with a pie-crust edge to the shell and black tips to the claws. Young ones are purplish. It spends the day buried and comes out at night to hunt, so you'll rarely catch one off a quay, but you'll see them on the fishmongers' slabs.
Cromer's are sweet because they grow slowly on the chalk reef offshore, which runs for miles along this coast.
- Size
- Up to 25cm and 3kg
- Lives
- 25 to 30 years
- Tell it by
- Pie-crust shell, black-tipped claws
Velvet swimming crab
Necora puber, the devil crab
Blue-grey with a coat of fine hair that feels like velvet, and bright red eyes. Its back legs are flattened into paddles and it can swim. It is the fastest and crossest crab on the coast: if one comes up on the line, it will square up to you rather than run.
Lives among rocks and weed rather than mud, so more likely off the pier at Cromer than on the marsh quays.
- Size
- Up to about 8cm across
- Lives
- A few years
- Tell it by
- Red eyes, paddle back legs
They don't grow, they moult
A crab's shell can't stretch, so it climbs out of it and swells up before the new one hardens. A shore crab does this about ten times in its first year and a fifth bigger each time. A soft, papery crab in the bucket has just done it: put it back first.
Orange eggs mean a mother
A female carrying a mass of orange eggs under her tail is "in berry". A shore crab carries up to a million of them for months. Put her back gently and straight away.
Which is which
Turn one over: a narrow pointed tail flap is a male, a wide rounded one is a female. Do it over the bucket, not the quay edge.
They grow back
A crab that loses a claw grows a new one over the next few moults, which is why you'll see lopsided crabs with one big claw and one small. Never pull a claw to find out.
Putting them back
Keep them in seawater and in the shade, not too many to a bucket, and put them back where you found them before you leave. Lower the bucket to the water or tip it gently on the mud, never a drop from the wall. Don't pull the legs, and don't take them home. They belong to the harbour.
The best crabbers on this coast are the ones who put every one back and come again next week.
While you're on the coast
The same tide that fills the quay is the one we sail on. Our boats leave Wells and Blakeney on the top of the water, past the seal colony at Blakeney Point, where several hundred grey and common seals haul out on the sand, and out among the whelkers and crab boats that work the harbour every day it's fit. The crabs in your bucket are the small cousins of the ones landed on Wells quay.
If the children have caught the bug, a couple of hours on a traditional wooden boat is the next step up. No sailing experience needed, and the skipper does the tides.
For families
Family sailing on the Norfolk coast →Short sails, seals, sandbanks and a go on the tiller.
See when we're sailing
Departures move with the tide, not the clock.