He deftly hooks the top of the trap and then, pulling hard, heaves the whole contraption up out of the water and bangs it onto the washboard of his boat. In the bottom of the trap are startled turtles, flopping fish and scuttling crabs. Flipping open a small door on the side of the trap, he dumps and shakes and bounces the whole wet load down into a wooden box in the bottom of his boat. There are more than 80 crabs in this haul. Bank traps for crabs look a lot like pound nets for fish.
Wire netting is strung along a row of wooden poles stretching straight out from the river bank.
The targets for these traps are peeler crabs - blue crabs getting ready to moult. The traps are stuck along the shoreline because that's where peeler crabs head hoping to hide out from other crabs. St. Mary's on the western shore and down here in Somerset County where it first became popular 40 years ago. Shortly after shedding, Maryland soft crabs, packed live in seagrass, are ready for market. It's an old way of fishing, but it's new for John Barnette.