“Direct from our boats to your table!” Best Stone Crabs is your source for the freshest Florida Stone Crabs, guaranteed!

With over 40 years of experience in the seafood industry, we have built a great relationship with our community, employees, vendors and fisherman. Our fishing boats specialize in stone crabs, so you can trust that your food is nothing but the freshest. Providing our customers with a great quality experience is very important to us.

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Crab Tour

Stone crab season begins October 15. On October 5 we start hauling our traps out. This gives us 10 days to get all of our traps in the water and (hopefully) filled with crabs. The season ends on May 15.

Stone Crabs are a renewable resource. Each stone crab is declawed and released unharmed. They then return to the bottom where they grow new claws. It takes about one year for a stone crab to grow its claw back to the original size.

A typical day for a stone crabber begins well before sunrise. By the time the sun peaks over the horizon, we are usually 20 miles or so offshore and ready to start pulling crab traps.

Stone crabs are generally caught in traps. The average trap weighs about 50 pounds. Each trap is tended with a single rope and buoy. Each fisherman has an individual color and permit number on each of his buoys. Traps are hauled to the surface with hydraulic winches. A stone crabber will pull 600 to 800 traps a day!

How does this big Stone Crab fit into one of these traps? One claw at a time actually. They are accustomed to entering small holes like the funnel in a crab trap, which resembles the small hole in which they live on the bottom of the ocean.

Packaging

Our goal at Best Stone Crabs is to consistently deliver the freshest gourmet seafood from our boats to your table as quickly and efficiently as possible. Here’s how we do it:

Our own fishing boats go out daily to ensure the freshest catch. We then cook it to perfection as soon it arrives at our dockside facility. It’s then carefully packaged with frozen gel packs within a reusable styrofoam cooler and sturdy cardboard shipping box. We exclusively use UPS or FedEx to rush your order overnight to any address you want with in the Continental United States.