1 of 4
Tia Clark grew up in Charleston but says she didn’t discover her passion for crabbing until she was 37 years old. “All of the stuff I’ve learned about this water, I’ve learned in just the past five years.”
Photo by Mic Smith
2 of 4
Nothing but net
Writer Hastings Hensel uses a dip net to pull in a keeper.
Photo by Mic Smith
3 of 4
Happy crabbers
Art Perry, Tia Clark’s assistant, keeps everyone laughing as he dispenses homespun advice on crabbing, and captures photos of the casual crabbing experience.
Photo by Mic Smith
4 of 4
Catch of the day
Science got it right when biologists named the tasty blue crab Callinectes sapidus, Latin for “beautiful, savory swimmer.”
Photo by Mic Smith
Tied to a cleat at Charleston’s Safe Harbor Bristol Marina, beside the pleasure boats and fishing vessels moored in their dockside slips, the taut line trembles. Tia Clark reaches down and carefully reels the line in, hand over hand, until the faint outline of a writhing creature nibbling on a chicken leg appears in in the water just below the surface. I stand beside her, dip net at the ready to bring in the prized catch: Atlantic blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, Latin for “beautiful, savory swimmer.”
“Nice scoop!” she cries when the net I bring out of the water wriggles with the snapping crustacean.
Then I do exactly as Clark instructed me earlier that morning. I dump the crab onto the dock and press its carapace down with my thumb. I make an L-shape with the thumb and forefinger of my other hand, and I pinch the crab behind its swimmer legs so that I won’t get pinched. I hold the crab aloft for pictures like a man showing off a rare jewel. Then we measure it against Clark’s leg tattoo—a regulation-sized blue crab (5-inches from point to point)—and verify the width with a DNR ruler.
It’s a keeper, and I dump the crab into a crate filled with all the other keepers we’ve caught that morning—enough crabs to have a proper crab boil later that afternoon—but now is no time to think of the future. Now is the time to hustle back to another line, pull in a mesh basket, and continue the two-hour merry-go-round of crab catching that is the Casual Crabbing with Tia experience—the five-star, top-rated Airbnb Experience.
---
With her true Charleston accent, the ease with which she can sling a cast net, her command of marine knowledge and, of course, the crab tattoo, you’d be forgiven for thinking Tia Clark grew up as a crabber. But you’d be wrong.
“I never caught a crab until I was 37 years old,” Clark says. “All of the stuff I’ve learned about this water, I’ve learned in just the past five years.”
She’d grown up eating crabs, sure. And she’d served seafood for more than two decades in the service industry, where, at a restaurant called The Mill, she earned a reputation as one of Charleston’s best bartenders. (Her assistant Art Perry—a jovial and energetic first mate—calls her “food and bev royalty.”) She had plenty of people in her large extended family who crabbed and fished. But as for Clark herself? The waterways and marshes of Charleston were simply the backdrop of daily existence.
“It’s like I had blinders on,” she says. “Don’t ask me why. It’s just the way I was living my life.”
One day, after months of health problems that put her out of work and “at the end of my line,” a cousin took her crabbing.
“My cousin takes me to this water, and we start catching some crabs, shrimp, fish,” Clark says. “I’m Geechee. We eat that stuff four times a week! So, I called my mama on the phone and said, ‘Why didn’t you ever take me crabbing?’ I was so mad at her. I was ready to fight her. I’m serious! Old Geechee lady, she was like, ‘You get it when you get it.’ My mom, she believes everybody gets their season, and she said, ‘It wasn’t your season.’”
After that experience, Clark went crabbing every single day. She’d close the bar at 2 a.m., set the alarm, and go watch the sunrise on the water with a cast net in her hand. When she started posting pictures of her catch on social media, one of her friends jokingly made a mock business for her called Casual Crabbing.
She laughed it off, but then the messages started piling up in her inbox. People wanted her to take them crabbing. Airbnb had just started a new tourist-booking platform called Airbnb Experiences, in which locals can host activities. Clark tried it out in July of 2018—just for the heck of it—and as she tells the story, the next thing she knew, she had more than 30 five-star reviews. Then Airbnb flew her out to San Francisco for a conference of exceptional hosts.
“I had never stayed at an Airbnb nor taken an Airbnb Experience in my life,” she says. “It was crazy. I was like a fish out of water.”
Everybody wanted to know how she was getting those great reviews. “I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve never mentioned reviews to people. I just manage a bar and take people crabbing sometimes.’”
But when she got back home, Clark knew she had a choice to make. She couldn’t keep trying to balance the late nights at the bar with the early mornings on the water.
---
These days, in its fourth year of business, Casual Crabbing is run like a well-oiled machine. Clark and Perry have perfected something of a comedic routine as they teach guests the techniques of crab catching and cast netting.
On the day I joined them, Perry explained the art of pulling in a crab basket thus: “Don’t think of it as O’Charley’s, where everybody is sitting down. Think of it as Taco Bell at midnight. Everybody’s coming in and getting what they want, then going. So, pull!”
We—two other families and I—pull. And pull. And toss. And pull some more. Part of the fun, you discover, is never knowing what you’re going to get in the net. Jelly globs, fiddler crabs, oysters, pufferfish, male crabs (called jimmies), female crabs (sooks), pregnant female crabs (spongers), molting crabs (soft-shells) and breeding crabs (couplers).
At the end of the session, you can take home your catch or have Clark clean it so a local restaurant can cook it for you. But you also leave Casual Crabbing with a newfound knowledge and respect for the salt life, and that, Clark says, is the real point. “We help build relationships with the water.”
---
Get There
Bookings for Casual Crabbing with Tia can be made online at casualcrabbingwithtia.com. Standard outings are $85 per person. Private group experiences can be arranged. All attendees must purchase a South Carolina saltwater fishing license to participate.
---
Related stories
Cooking up Carolina crab—Peak season for blue crab is October to January, so why not add these delicious recipes to the menu for your next oyster roast?
The world is your oyster—Oyster season is officially here. Make the most of it with four delicious recipes from Chef Belinda Smith-Sullivan.
The best of South Carolina shrimp—What goes good with crab and oysters. Shrimp! Try these recipes to complete your seafood trifecta.