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[Lozzymandias]

Made you look.

My sea of magma is frequented by magma crabs. I want to do fun things with them like force all my enemies to walk past them in single file and arrive precooked at my front door. Heres the run.
How do i catch them?
I've opened up the magma sea, left a path open to my fortress and cage trapped it but none of them want to path into my fortress. Can i bait them with kittens? How can i get them?

[Baffler]

They're don't actively seek out prey or fights, or do much of anything besides spit basalt at other creatures that happen by for that matter. You've really just got to wait for them to wander in. Building more trap corridors would probably help. You should also be sure to check that they're actually able to get into the fortress. They can't jump or climb, only swim, so if there's no ramp they won't be able to get out of the magma sea and into your traps.

If they do have a path and are just not interested, and if you're willing to cheat a bit by messing with the RAW's, you could give them [BUILDINGDESTROYER:2], reload, and leave out a sacrificial statue or something in the room you want to catch them in. According to the wiki units with that tag will path into your fort from wherever they happen to be to topple buildings. Magma crabs aren't trapavoid so they should be easily caged. Once you have as many as you want just remove the tag and reload, and they should be back as they were. I've never tried anything like that myself, so maybe someone more knowledgeable will find a problem, but last I checked save RAW changes to creatures don't require you to generate a new world.

[Eric Blank]

Damnit, ninjas!

You can't really bait them because they prefer to just spit gobs of magma at things rather than approach them. They path where they want, when they want, and there's not really any sense to it. The best you can do is limit the total number of paths available to them and wait patiently for one to stumble into your traps. And make sure that when they do, no dwarves are around to distract them and get themselves killed in a horrible fire.

[Immortal-D]

The lack of ramp access out of the magma is the biggest hindrance.  If you're up for a bit of a project, you could cut-off a portion of the magma sea by dropping obsidian, then pump out that section of magma.  Once drained, you can set traps at the ground level, and the crabs will get caught eventually.

[PatrikLundell]

Well, they certainly have no problem using the diagonal upwards movement to path into a staircase whose digging was stopped by hitting the SMR without discovering the magma sea.

[steel jackal]

pump out all the magma to the surface so they are walking on SMR, then floor over SMR to allow your dwarves to walk on it, then put up tons of traps and give your militia nether cap shields and wooden swords then hope the crab doges into a cage

[GhostDwemer]

pump out all the magma to the surface so they are walking on SMR, then floor over SMR to allow your dwarves to walk on it, then put up tons of traps and give your militia nether cap shields and wooden swords then hope the crab doges into a cage

Creatures can safely walk on magma flows, which is what the top of semi-molten rock is called. As long as there is no magma present, obviously. You would need to floor it in order to build traps on it, though. Nitpicking aside, this sounds like the best magma crab catching method there is.

You could then pit them into a pillbox with fortification walls and raising bridges all around and you've basically got yourself a magma turret, just lower the bridges to turn it on.

[Infinityforce]

I've got crabs
*points to signature, not pubic region*