Stone Crab Fishing with Chef Mark Weber

Mason Street Grill has always been committed to provided the freshest seafood possible. As a testament to Mason Street Grill’s commitment, Executive Chef Mark Weber was invited along on a stone crab fishing excursion in the Gulf of Mexico with our new crab distributor. Read along as Chef Weber tells us about his first day at sea.

Wow what a great day of fishing!

I was on the boat at Marina at 4 a.m. to help load bait and meet the crew. They ventured off to visit a few of their trap lines set close to shore as we waited for news of stone crabs via radio. The crab harvest was light near shore so the boat headed up to Clearwater to check traps up there. About 9 a.m. they started really hitting good crab traps and called us to come out. We hopped into a 1050 HP 35 foot Kingfishing boat and sped off to their location. We had a reporter from Newswatch channel 9 with us and our videographer.

When we got to the boat, they were about 18 miles up the coast and a few miles off shore. The wind and the waves were very choppy and made it really hard to take photos. We got some really good action shots from our boat and then transferred over to the fishing boat.

The crabbing went well with lots of good sized claws and multiple crabs in most traps.

After lots of filming, playing with crabs, and pigs feet, we loaded up about 150 pounds of crab and headed back. That Kingfishing boat does about 75 mph on the water! We got in after about 40 minutes and unloaded the crab.

Back at the dock we took some more film and loaded up the crabs to take back to the processing plant for cooking

We got back to the processing plant and went through the HAACP process for handling the “green” claws from start to finish. Its crazy, the green claws are packed in sea water and they are still alive. If you touch them they will still close and try to pinch you! After a couple of hours of weighing, cooking, sorting, and re-weighing, the claws were ready for restaurant delivery. All of the claws we brought in were delivered to local restaurants.

I am going over to the processing plant this morning to see how things are going. They have crab lined up for processing all day and all night so I would like to see how they handle this volume.