BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - From his fishing camp and lodge along Grandpaw Bayou in lower Plaquemines Parish, Watson Perrin doesn’t have to go far to get fresh crabs. The crab traps are attached by a rope to a ball floating in the shallow water. A metal rake snatches the float, and the traps are pulled in and crabs dumped into a basket. Perrin has been crabbing these waters since he was a child. He’s been a commercial crabber for the past decade, and hosts guests at his bayou side lodge for fishing and crabbing and what he calls Da Bayou Experience.

“We’ll take them on a crab tour and just to see, you know, a trap come up with like two or three dozen in it, one trap, and they’re like, wow. Look at all the crabs,” said Perrin.

And if a ball gets caught in the rake, Jacamo, the crab dog springs into action.

“Jocko, over time has watched me go up to the front of the boat and knock the ball out. Well, now he does it for me,” Perrin said.

Back at the lodge, Perrin offers his advice for boiling crabs. Ignore the usual instructions to boil first and let the crabs soak for a half hour. He puts the live crabs into the seasoning and then boils them.

“We let the crabs season themselves, they’ll breath all that seasoning and water throughout their system,” said Perrin.

And within a half hour, the crabs are ready to eat.

“You have to love it to get what you want out of it, ‘cause if not, you’ll be frustrated and you won’t do it at all, said Carmalita Sylve.

Sylve, who cooks for the guests, has grown up along the bayou. She’s been catching cooking and peeling crabs most of her life.

Have you ever had people tell you, I love crabs, but I hate to peel them?

“To get that treasure in there? It’s work,” Sylve said.

Take the back flipper and grab a hold of the shell where the point is at the big point, and you just pull and then break it in half. And then you take your knife and you slit it open. The regular white meat, you can just squeeze and all of that’ll come out. And here is where your jumbo lump is in the back flipper, but that’s all your crab meat.

Perrin is more into speed, peeling, and eating.

“It’s like the NASCAR way of eating. Basically, you pull the shell off and then you can start with the claws. But you get the knuckle and you pull all the meat out and you can pull all the meat out of the crab by his legs,” Perrin said.

It takes patience and persistence to perfect your own crab peeling technique, but you are rewarded throughout the process with a spicy taste of fresh crabs.

More information on how to peel boiled crabs in two minutes or less can be found on Heart of Louisiana’s website .

to report a typo. Please include the headline.