Ingredients

2 lbs fresh flounder fillets (skin on)
1 lb Chesapeake Bay lump backfin crab meat
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup crab seasoning
1 lemon (juice and pulp only)
1 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. chopped parsley
1/2 cup diced onion
1/4 cup olive oil

Directions:

1. Line a baking dish with olive oil and place fillets in dish, skin side down.
2. Mix egg, melted butter, mayonnaise, crab seasoning, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, parsley and onion.
3. Blend in crab meat.
4. Spread stuffing over fillets and bake at 400 for 5 minutes, until juices begin to boil.
5. Move to broiler, watch closely, broiling until stuffing begins to brown lightly.

Serving suggestions:

This dish is excellent with sliced garden tomatoes, fresh steamed vegetables or rice and a Virginia Chardonnay.

                          

Blue Crabs

The Atlantic blue crab is found in the Chesapeake Bay and coastal waters of Virginia. When in the hard shelled stage, these crabs make excellent bait for tautog, sea bass, red hake, porgy and other wreck and reef dwellers. They are fished as cut bait and occasionally fished whole.

In the soft-shelled or “peeler” stages, blue crabs make excellent bait for drum fish, croakers, sea trout and other fish of the Chesapeake Bay. They are fished as cut bait or whole, depending on their size and the species targeted.

Green Crab

The green crab is an introduced species that is sometimes available in tackle shops. Their shell size can be up to 3″. In Virginia, green crabs are fished whole or as cut bait for tautog.

Jonah Crab

The Jonah crab is a species of crab found off the Atlantic Coast of Virginia. It is closely related to the Dungeness crab of the Pacific Coast. Jonah Crabs have black tips on their claws and their shells have 9 teeth on each side of the eye.  Jonah crabs are used for bottom fishing on shipwrecks and for deep dropping.

Mole Crabs

Mole crabs are used for bait while surf fishing for species including pompano, speckled trout, whiting, and sea mullet.

Mole crabs can be caught in the surf by digging a hole in the sand at the very edge of the wash. Allow water to enter the hole, and swish it around. If the area is home to mole crabs, they will be seen darting through the water before they quickly burry themselves in the sand.

Fishermen also gather them with special metal mesh scoops or with meshed wire nets attached to poles. They can sometimes be purchased at bait and tackle shops in some areas.

Fiddler Crabs

Fiddler crabs are found along beaches, marshes and mud flats. They are sometimes gathered by fishermen and used for bait for species such as tautog, scup, sheepshead and black sea bass.

Shrimp

Fresh shrimp are available in Virginia from spring thru fall from seafood markets, farmers markets and roadside vendors. Shrimp are sized by “count”, the value being the average number of shrimp specimens per pound. For example, shrimp of 16/20 count means there are 16 to 20 shrimp per pound. Shrimp are an excellent choice for bottom fishing on structure such as fishing piers and artificial reefs.

Hard Clams

The hard clam is the most popular American clam. The largest hard clams are called chowder clams and are used for cut bait for species such as tautog, spadefish, black drum and croaker.

Ocean Quahogs

The ocean quahog is also known as a mahogany clam, mahogany quahog, black quahog and black clam. Quahog may reach 3-6 inches in diameter.

Surf Clams

The Atlantic surf clam is harvested commercially off the coast. Surf clams range from 4 to 8 inches in length. They are sometimes available fresh but may also be found in tackle shops as a shucked and frozen product.

                          

The licenses will be retired permanently. The removal of 75,441 licensed crab pots represents an almost 20 percent reduction in the number of pots permitted for use in Virginia waters.

“This far surpassed our expectations,’’ said VMRC Commissioner Steven G. Bowman. “This is a great long-term benefit for this environmentally and economically important species.”

The license buyback program closed on Nov. 1. A total of 664 bids were received, in the first ever so-called reverse auction in which crabbers submitted non-negotiable bids and gave the lowest offer they would accept for the purchase of their licenses.

The bids were analyzed and matched to the harvest histories of each bidder. Purchase priority was given for the licenses used most often, and number of pots permitted for each license, in order to reduce the fishing effort in the most cost-efficient manner.

Acceptance letters to the holders of the 359 licenses accepted for the buyback were mailed on Nov. 20. Checks will be written within the next few weeks.

Payments will be made from a pool of $6.7 million appropriated by the federal government as part of a blue crab disaster designation by the National Marine Fisheries Service last year. The VMRC’s license buyback program was enthusiastically approved by NMFS.

License buyback offers were accepted from 59 full-time commercial crabbers, 131 part-time crabbers and 169 crabbers who had not used their licenses since 2004 and were put on a waiting list until the crab population rebounds and stabilizes at high levels for three consecutive years.

Those full-time crabbers held licenses that permitted the use of 14,299 crab pots; 27,733 pots for part-timers; and 33,409 for those on the waiting list.

“It is especially important to ensure the long-term viability of our rebuilding efforts to retire licenses held by those on the waiting list. When the overall crab population returns to abundance, those licenses could significantly undermine the stability of the stock if they were put back in use,’’ said VMRC Fisheries Chief Jack Travelstead. “This is money well spent for the future of this fishery.”

Removing 75,441 crab pots from circulation is a reduction of 18 percent of the 423,000 crab pots that had been licensed for use in Virginia waters.

Retiring 359 crab licenses from the books will leave 1,649 licenses in circulation, including 314 licenses that cannot currently be used because they are on a waiting list. The number of crab licenses issued was capped in 1998.

The bids received varied widely. Full-time crabber bids ranged from $5,000 to $600,000; part-timer bids ranged from $500 to $634,000; and bids from those on the waiting list ranged from $500 to $300,000.

The accepted bids ranged from $500 to $175,000.

Last year, the VMRC and Maryland officials confronted a dangerously low crab population and enacted a bay-wide 34 percent harvest reduction strategy in an effort to rebuild a stock in danger of crashing in the event of a single poor year of reproduction.

At that point, the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab population had plummeted 70 percent since 1993.

The VMRC banned the winter dredging of crabs last year and this year, shortened the season for harvest of female crabs, required larger escape rings on crab pots, and enacted a waiting list for inactive licenses.

Within a year, the bay-wide adult crab population doubled, according to a scientific crab population survey that has proven over decades to be highly accurate. Results of this winter’s survey will guide the VMRC in future crab management decisions.

“We are stewards of our marine resources and we take our jobs seriously,” said Bowman. “We will do what is necessary.”