Know Exactly When to Buy & Catch Blue Crabs in Texas
A Quick Summary
Is it legal to catch crabs year-round in Texas?
It is legal to recreationally catch blue and stone crabs in Texas year-round. However, there is the annual crab trap clean up week in February, the slowest crabbing month, when you cannot use crab pots. During this week you can still use hand lines and dip nets, just not crab traps.
When are blue crabs in season in Texas?
While Texas blue crabs are caught year-round, you should buy them while they’re “in-season” between June and November. Crabs caught in the spring have less meat than those caught in summer and fall. Texas has one of the longest crabbing seasons in the United States, taking up most of the year.
When is the best time to go crabbing in Texas?
Texas has warm waters that keep blue crabs active throughout the year. The best time to go crabbing is between March and December, when the average surface water temperature is over 70° F, which is ideal for catching blue crabs. With no set season in Texas, you can crab year-round with most crabbing gear.
If you want to go crabbing in Texas, the first thing you should know is when to catch and buy blue crabs. The state is lucky to have warm waters that keep blue crabs active for most of the year, which reflects in the state’s relaxed crabbing policies (compared to other states). Here are a few important dates you should know:
Information from TPWD as of May 5, 2023. Visualized by Crabbing Hub.
I hope the Texans realize how lucky they are to have such a long crabbing season and relaxed crabbing laws. The Gulf Shore is blessed with year-round warm water, which is the perfect environment for blue crabs to thrive. That doesn’t mean that you can go crabbing at any point in the year and expect the best crabbing results. The best months are between March and December, with the meatiest crabs being caught in late summer and fall.
The best water temperature for catching blue crabs is at least 70°F.
If you want to get good at crabbing, it’s important to understand the annual movement patterns of blue crabs. This will help you understand when to go crabbing in real time. The information in this article is based on averages, and can’t always be accurate on a day to day basis.
What you want to look for is water temperature and tides. Water temperature helps you narrow down a time of year to go crabbing, and tides are for a day to day basis. Since this article is more of an overview covering the time of year to go crabbing in Texas, I won’t go into the best time of day. If you want to know the best tides to go crabbing, read my visualized guide: When’s The Best Time To Go Crabbing?.
Bluecrab.info has an in-depth guide to a Blue Crab’s life cycle, which includes some important temperature information for blue crabs:
When temperatures drop to 50°F, blue crabs retreat from the shoreline to deeper waters to burrow. This is why the winter months in most states are considered crabbing off season.
When temperatures climb to 59°F, “growth” occurs in blue crabs. Crabs are evermore active as the temperature climbs. Water temperatures above 91°F is lethal for blue crabs. If water temperatures get this hot, crabs retreat to deeper and cooler waters. Commercial crabbers follow, by setting their traps further offshore.
So, the sweet spot to go crabbing is in the middle, around 70°F.
With this information we can figure out when crabs should be in season. All we need is the average water temperature by month. Luckily for us, the NOAA has tracked sea water surface temperature with their satellites for well over 10 years (Source). So, let’s go over when blue crabs are in season across the coast.
In Texas, the best crabbing months are from March to December
With the public data of surface water temperature by the NOAA’s various testing sites in each state, I found the average water temperature by month. This can give us an idea of the best months to go crabbing. See the graph below.
As you can see, halfway through March Texas hits the optimal water temperature on average for crabbing. This stays constant until November and even into December. Temperatures between 60° F and 70° F is still decent for crabbing, but not as fruitful.
If you want to find the current water temperature for waterways near you in Texas, or see where I got the data for this post, check out NOAA’s Coastal Water Temperature Table.
Keep in mind that this number is different in different parts of Texas. The water at Corpus Christi is going to be much warmer than Port Arthur. I took an average from the following testing stations in Texas, which gives us a rough idea of when the best months are to go crabbing is throughout the state. The temperatures in this article were taken from the following locations:
- Brownsville
- Corpus Christi
- Barbours Cut
- Sabine Pass, Port Arthur
- Rockport
- Port Mansfield
- Port Aransas
- Galveston Bay Entrance, North Jetty
Read: Where to go Crabbing in Texas
Now that you know the best months to go crabbing, I highly recommend you read my article on where to go crabbing in Texas (link below). I’ve found dozens of proven spots across the Texas Coast.
