At this time of the year, on a quiet night, you can hear the rumbling west of Soldiers Point.
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It's the crabs getting restless with the blue swimmers tapdancing through the channels around Lemon Tree Passage and Tilligerry Creek and the big muddies lumbering through the mangrove forests in the Karuah River.
Crabbing can be great fun and very rewarding however it must be realized that we in Port Stephens have different crabbing laws from anywhere else in the state.
Witches hat nets are banned and any trap with an entry wider than 36cm is also illegal. Why? You may ask. The answer is to protect our turtle population which is the largest estuarine gathering of sea turtles in NSW.
Sadly, up until five years ago, the turtles were becoming entangled in witches hats or swimming into traps and drowning in big numbers.
State Fisheries wisely altered the local rules to protect the turtles and the results have been fantastic with no recorded drownings of turtles since the new rules have been put in place.
Get in touch with Stinker
If you've got a picture of a whopper caught in Port Stephens or great fishing yarn to share get in touch with Stinker. Send your story and photos via email to Stinker at stinkerfishing@yahoo.com.
