Different type of crabs ...

Im very confused with the crabs story, finally i understood that the ordinary crabs are no good for the bait, the ones u get loads. Yes i make the difference now, crabs with and crabs without the meat in them, but then again i understood theres 3 different crabs you cane use as a bait ?
Peeler crab, velvet crab and then some sort of soft peeler crab ?
How to make a difference between a peeler and ordinary shait crab visually by not breaking the leg and then peeler crab vs velvet crab, is the velvet crab any good at all ?
I may be wrong here but couple other lads looked into my basket tonight and said 1 of the crabs is velvet one ...

Little confusing me but i hope i get answers here for my dumb question.

Cheers

hi marko
first of all the way you can tell a peeler from hard back is the colour when a hard back is geting ready to peel it will go a lot lighter in colour and the underneth of the crab will be a yellow/cream colour but on a hard back it tends to be darker more of a greenish colour

and to tell a velvet crab (also knowen as swimmers ) look at the back legs they are more flat more like little paddles and they have what looks like little hairs on them

and for soft crabs witch are only hard backs after peeling geting ready to harden again

hope this helps a bit
tight lines

yes jus as the man says also on the underneath of a peeler the flapper is a V shape!!!! other are more round!!!!

The flapper under the crab, is the sexual organ of the crab, females are more rounded while males are V shaped, females go into "peel" first, during the warmer months (often you'll find them under males, during the summer mating) and males go into "peel" later, the V shaped ones, hence why you still find the odd peeler now and most are all male (well the ones in my freezer are (thanks tightlines ) another over looked crab is the Hermit but so far I've managed to attracted doggies with and I caught Hermits on fish bait fishing onto sand.