Louisiana is the only Gulf state with a serious softshell industry built on trap-caught peelers, and its rules are written around it. Two windows a year when you can block your rings, an immature-female ban with a softshell exception, and a work-box carve-out that keeps the sorting legal. Here's how it fits together.
Busters, peelers, and what the trap is for
A peeler is a crab with a fully formed soft shell under the hard one, days from molting. A buster has started to back out. Both are worth more alive and shedding than hard, and a trap holding them needs to keep them in, which is exactly what escape rings prevent. So Louisiana lets you plug the rings when the peeler run is on.
The two windows
- April 1 through June 30
- September 1 through October 31
Inside those dates, escape ring openings may be obstructed. Outside them, every ring must be open. There's no grace period at the boundary; a plugged ring on July 1 is a violation.
Traps built of 2-5/16" square mesh or larger are exempt from ring rules year round, which is why some peeler traps are built that way.
Immature females
Since 2017, commercial harvest of immature female crabs, the V-bottom or "maiden" with the triangular apron, is prohibited. Two exceptions keep the softshell business running:
- Softshell processing. Immature females held for shedding, or sold to a processor for shedding, are exempt. Only crabs at the white-line stage or later qualify.
- 2% incidental. A licensed commercial crabber may have immature females up to 2% of the total crabs in possession.
Mature females, dome apron, are legal. Learn the apron. It's the difference between a load and a citation.
The work box
Crabs in a work box being sorted aboard an active fishing vessel aren't counted against the immature-female restriction. That's what makes culling possible: you can have a box full of everything the trap caught while you sort it, as long as the sorted result is legal. Sort fast and sort to a gauge; the 5" stick handles the size call so your eye can handle the apron.
Sizes
Commercial hard crabs, 5" point to point. Peelers and softshells have no size minimum in Louisiana. Recreational crabbers have no size minimum at all, with a 12-dozen daily limit and ten traps.
The gear
Whether you run hard-crab traps or peeler traps, the door is the same: a lid on a band and a hook. Ours is sold by the box into Louisiana. The full legal trap spec is on the rigging guide.