We were also catching them in the small crab baskets. You tie bait to the bottom of a crab basket and the four sides open when the basket is lowered to the floor of the saltwater creek.

A string tied to the top of the small basket is anchored to something in the boat such as a cooler lid, steering wheel or anything that's semi-stationary (or if you are incredibly patient, I suppose you could hold it in your hand). After a few minutes of letting the trap sit still, during which crabs move into the basket to feed, a quick pull of the string raises the four sides of the trap and you may have from one to five crabs at a time. Put out four or five of these around the boat, along with the hand lines and you can see how things could get crabby in a hurry.

And I, for one, have no problem with that at all, especially knowing how much I would enjoy the taste of cooked crab once we got home.

If you've ever enjoyed the scrumptious taste of steamed blue crabs or deviled crab, then you know exactly what I mean.

The day was working out even better than I had originally planned. We had started the day on a dropping tide and had pulled the boat onto the beach, just around the point from the pounding surf. As the tide continued to drop, we walked along the beach and picked up scads of shells. We found everything from simple shells to completely intact sand dollars and essentially filled up a five-gallon bucket with a myriad of the colorful and plentiful shells.

I even managed to get in a bit of surf-fishing and caught some fish. I wasn't even planning on fishing, so it was really an unexpected bonus. But we did catch some redfish, black drum and trout.

On the rising tide, we managed to get in a bit of swimming while we were shelling and fishing and doing the beachcombing thing. Of course, we had to stop and eat . . . a couple of times.

So we stowed the fish and shells and began the real thrust of the day's adventure: the crabbing.

The first spot we tried was at the mouth of a small creek and the action was good, but we were catching a throwback crab for every good keeper. When the action slowed after about 20 minutes, we moved to another similar area and repeated the process, catching several good-sized keeper crabs -- then began catching those that required close measurement to ensure they were 5 inches long.

Finally, we found a place that really turned out to be the honeyhole. We were catching some really big crabs there and often catching two big keeper crabs at a time.

In fact, when things really got crabby, I had to forfeit my crabbing activity -- I was staying busy simply putting crabs in the cooler, getting traps prepared to go back in the water, dipping crabs for folks who needed assistance and retrieving crabs that somehow got loose and began scurrying around on the floor of the boat causing havoc and mayhem with the female population.

In general, I was basically doing things a crab boat flunky generally does. Some of you may know what that entails. But I enjoyed it.

As noted, this is only a small list of the potential family fishing opportunities around our state. But these are proven places to take the family for an enjoyable and productive trip.

But I've always found that taking plenty of water and soft drinks along with ample amounts of food will help get the family through the day.