Janie, try the Manhaden shanties & songs of the Georgia Sea Islands, loaded with songs of the inshore fisheries

Did loads of crabbing as a kid on Cape Cod, we get blue crabs there too. I also got some crab at last yrs getaway, it's well worth the work, lot like working on a lobster but you unNew Englanders wouldn't know much bout lobsters if you were bit by one.

For crabbing we used to use dead dogs as bait until we ran out of dead dogs. We'd run down the dogs with a string cans tied together & corral them & then let the bugs at them. Where'd we get the bugs you might ask? We'd go bug hunting in the tenement alleys, we'd use rotten potatoes to lure them out of hiding then use the same tin cans we used to catch the dogs, on the bugs. They were huge bugs but the cans were those gallon size cans, the industrial type cans. We used to get the cans from the old brewery. You may not believe but in the area of Boston where I grew up, right down the street from my grandfather's house there were at least 5 of 6 breweries, in time most where all burnt down , I think 1 or 2 are still standing, empty of course. Back to the cans. When they were mixing the hops & yeast & the other stuff they'd have these huge 1 gallons cans, tons of them & I never knew what was in them cause the labels were always charred off them but they had them & when they were finished with them they stocked them out by the loading docks & waited till Friday for the collection guy to come around with his horse & buggy & collect them them. We never stole the cans, we bargined with the buggie guy for them. We'd trade him horse food for the cans. Yup, really, these horses were big & needed all kinds of food & we had a good in with the crabbers who'd give us crabs if we left them alone & didn't bother them for protection money. We never was gonna hurt them, them bei8ng pretty mean themselves & they never really needed protection either but that's what made our world back then run. Speaking of running anyone ever run down a dead dog?

Barry