Walk the docks behind Kelly's Fish House Dining Room on the Gordon River right now and you'll see the same thing you see every September: wire traps stacked in towers, waiting for boats to run them back out into the Gulf. It happens every year in the weeks before October 15, when Florida's stone crab season opens and Naples quietly reorganizes itself around a five-ounce claw.
What's different this year isn't the ritual. It's what the crabbers pulled out of the water last season, and what that means for the claws that land on Naples tables starting next month.
The Season Naples Got Used To After Ian
For three seasons after Hurricane Ian tore through Southwest Florida in 2022, stone crabbers here worked lean water. The storm scoured the Gulf floor along the crabbing grounds off Lovers Key and further south toward the Ten Thousand Islands, and hauls stayed thin through the following seasons. Anyone who ordered stone crab in Naples between 2022 and 2024 got used to smaller claws, tighter supply, and prices that reflected both.
That run ended this spring. Marco News reported in April 2026 that stone crabbers from Sanibel down to Everglades City closed out the 2025-26 season with hauls three to four times larger than what they'd seen in recent years, the strongest season since Ian. St. James City crabber Vincent Montella, working the grounds near Lovers Key State Park, described claws that had grown from roughly three-quarters of a pound to more than two pounds. Down in Everglades City, Jimmy Grimm of Grimm's Stone Crab said his family's two boats were bringing in between 300 and 1,000 pounds of claws a day, numbers he called simply a good season for the customer.
That's the season that just wrapped on May 1. The traps going back into the water on October 15 are working the same recovered grounds.
What That Actually Means for What's on Your Table
A rebound season doesn't guarantee the next one repeats it. Crab populations move on their own timeline, and nobody in Everglades City is promising 2026-27 mirrors the year before. But a population that came back this strong after three lean years, with more crabs and bigger claws across the board, gives this opener a different baseline than the one Naples has been working from since 2022.
Statewide, stone crab claws typically run $22 to $80 a pound depending on size, from mediums (the smallest legal size, two to three ounces) up through jumbo, colossal, and the rare mega-colossal that can approach a full pound on its own. You'll get six to eight medium claws per pound, versus one or two if you're paying for mega-colossals. If last season's larger average claw size holds into this one, the mix restaurants and markets pull from their traps skews toward the bigger, pricier end of that range more often, which is a better problem to have than the alternative Naples got used to after the storm.
Only the claw gets harvested. Florida law requires crabbers to return the crab to the water alive, and a stone crab can regenerate a lost claw within about ninety days. It's the reason the fishery has lasted this long without collapsing the population outright, storm years included.
Where Naples Already Has Reservations
A handful of places have been doing this long enough that locals don't think twice about where to go. A few worth knowing:
- Kelly's Fish House Dining Room on 5th Avenue South has served the Gordon River since 1953, making it Naples' oldest seafood restaurant. Crabbers here leave before sunrise and cook and grade the day's catch right on the docks, and you can walk down and buy straight off the boat instead of sitting for dinner.
- Truluck's, on 4th Avenue South since 1992, treats the season as an event. Executive Chef Jonathan Abrevaya's kitchen serves the claws in tiered seafood towers, and the restaurant leans into its self-description as a special-occasion spot, not a quick bite.
- Alexander's Garden Restaurant on Tamiami Trail, where Chef Alexander Bernard has run the kitchen since 1997, times its seasonal reopening to land just ahead of the October 15 start, a detail regulars watch for every year.
- Swan River Seafood, at 3741 Tamiami Trail North, runs both a market and a restaurant, so you can eat in or take claws home in any size they're grading that day.
- Captain & Krewe Seafood Market and Raw Bar, tucked near Cambier Park by the fire station, added online ordering this year, a small but useful change for anyone who wants claws without the wait.
- Mr. Big Fish on Neapolitan Way keeps prices reasonable and a casual room, though the large and jumbo sizes tend to sell out by midweek once the season gets rolling.
- If you'd rather skip the markup entirely, local commercial fisherman Jimmy Perry, known around town as Big Jimmy, sells claws directly off his boat at locations he posts to his Facebook page as the catch comes in. It's the least polished option and often the best price in town.
The One Weekend Everybody Actually Shows Up
The City of Naples has confirmed its Stone Crab Festival for Saturday, October 24, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. at Tin City. It's free to get in, and the day runs on live music, vendors, and food truck stands set against the historic waterfront buildings that have anchored that stretch of the Naples River for decades. If you've never gone, it's the closest thing Naples has to a citywide potluck built around a single crustacean, and it lands nine days after the season technically opens, giving restaurants time to work through the first rush before the bigger crowd shows up.
Why This Season Is Worth Showing Up For Early
Naples and the surrounding waters from Marco Island down through Everglades City produce up to 40 percent of Florida's total stone crab supply, according to the Paradise Coast tourism board, which is part of why this delicacy feels less like a tourist novelty here and more like a season on the local calendar, the way stone fruit or shrimp runs mark a season anywhere else. Everglades City earned its nickname as the stone crab capital of the world after Ernest Hamilton pioneered commercial harvesting there in the early twentieth century, and that history still runs through nearly every claw served on this coast.
What makes this particular opener worth paying attention to isn't nostalgia. It's that the run of thin hauls Naples adjusted to after Ian just gave way to the best season crabbers have logged since the storm. Nobody can promise the numbers repeat, which is exactly why the early weeks of this season, when the first traps come up and restaurants start grading claws again, are worth showing up for rather than waiting until February to see what's left.
If you're new enough to Naples that stone crab season still feels like a novelty rather than a fixture on your calendar, our Naples neighborhood guide covers more of what makes this stretch of the Gulf coast run the way it does throughout the year.
Whether you're settling into life on the water here or still weighing what part of Naples fits how you actually want to live, Heather Porrett knows this coastline claw by claw and canal by canal. Work with Heather — Start Your Waterfront Search.
