Merry Christmas Autolobster there are some very good crabs full of flesh being caught, however there is still quite a few what I call lite weight crabs ie: not full of meat yet. You can tell which is which straight away by just using light thumb pressure on the back of shell pushing it in. If they are not full of meat you will feel the shell push in quite easily, with these crabs it's best to just put them back as what you get out of them in the way of meat is very disappointing, as you have experienced.

It's been my experience that if you are getting a lot of crabs in this condition it is best to move as you may end up wasting good time catching crabs not worth keeping and the school you have found are likely to all be in the same condition. In the past I have caught 1 - 2 good size crabs per pot but in fact I have caught nothing as they have all been "soft", a hard situation to leave as you getting nice crabs and plenty of them but they contain nothing. frustrating.