Went to the famous Cantler's Crab House on Mill Creek in April Got a Crab Cake Platter 18 dollars. Was great .Been there a half dozen times by boat or truck. 1 dozen Large crabs were 110 a dozen.And people were getting them. I told a old friend who's lived in Stafford all his life 75 years..about it He knows several commercial crabbers that way.. I asked him what he thought the price was. He said 30 dollars . I told him the price.. He said.."There Out of Their Minds"....
Another time I was at Tims at Cherry Hill In PW. on the Potomac. A young Marine by himself, day off weekday, got a dozen. They came steamed .He looked at them.. Then took one. looked really good at it, Slowly pulled at it, finally got the shell off and saw the inside and put it back on the pile with a
disgusted look on his face. I felt sorry for him, was just going to get a burger, and a beer, they were 30 a dozen a good hit on his payday, and I told him I would buy them as I would not have to wait the 20 minutes to get some. Well Thanks..Sure.! He was happy to get rid of them and get his money back. I asked him where he was from and he said Iowa..No crabs there, the first he ever saw..and probably the last..for a while..that he would want again.
Come July 4th They will be 250 a bushel at least. The Highest priced day of the year for crabs. If you can find any. My favorite Crab House's are Skippers pier Deale Md and Capt Johns or Shymanskys at Cobb Island Md. Cantlers and several others are great but Cantler's has a good 2 hour wait this time of the year. If your getting steamed crabs. they better take a good 20 minutes to get them if you see them steaming. Good food does takes Time as they say.
The good thing about Chesapeake Country is there are lots of crab houses ...In Maryland.. In Va.. Not so many and that's because of Va's stiffer drink laws over the years that kept many places from ever getting off the ground. In Va the trend is places to by crabs cooked or fresh. And some good crab houses, like Tims ..all of them are good..
If You really feel Crabby.. Take a look here, You can see where their being caught, crab houses, everything totally about the Blue crab by Steve Zinski of the U of Richmond.
http://www.bluecrab.info/