VLVL(4)(d) Crawdad Fishing

[Vincent A. Maeder]

	"He was heading for a little farm on the creek road, where he
had a sideline in crawfish..." (VL, Ch. 4, p. 35)  Any of various
freshwater crustaceans of the genera Cambarus and Astacus, resembling a
lobster but considerably smaller. Also called crawdad, mudbug.  Found in
ponds and streams throughout the world (except Africa) usually brownish
green in color.  They are scavengers growing up to 6 inches in length.
According to Dale Sheckler, they's good eatin', "Unlike muddy Louisiana
crawdads, California mountain crayfish were as close to lobster as I'd
ever experienced. I was hooked."
http://www.saintbrendan.com/cdnaug/mtn_spot.html
http://ag.ansc.purdue.edu/discuss/craw.htm

	"Morning, the biggest, splashing down the middle of the creek,
with the others carrying jars and sacks of twenty-penny nails, and
fastening a piece of bacon to the bottom of every knee-deep pool they
came to.  By the time they got back to where they'd started, there'd be
frantic invasions of crawdads, all milling around unable to get the
bacon loose.  Procedure then was to bring out a minnow bag on a stick,
hit the crawdad on the nose with a stick, and catch it, as it jumped, in
the bag.  Sometimes the kids would even allow their parents to come
along and help out." (VL, Ch. 4, pp. 35-36)  Although I cannot find the
procedure outlined, several are described by Mr. North.
http://www.idfishnhunt.com/crawfish.htm

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If you have access to a passel of enthusiastic kids, you might sic them
onto the job of both catching and cleaning a mess of supper crawfish.
(Trouble is, they'll also eat most of the catch and then whine for
more.)

Where do you find crawfish in Idaho?
Pretty much from one end of the state to the other in reservoirs,
rivers, ponds, irrigation canals, and tiny creeks - in a word anywhere
there's water of a relatively warm temperature. (We catch ours in
Brownlee Reservoir.) Beyond this, the key word is rocks.

Idaho crawfish are vulnerable to all sorts of predators unless they take
daytime shelter under rocks, sunken logs, or aquatic weeds. Smaller
rubble-rock provides more hiding crevices than do large boulders. In my
wading and skin-diving experience, crawfish seem to frequent shallower
waters up to six feet or so deep, but some anglers catch literally
hundreds of these bottom-grubbing crustaceans in deep-water traps.

As barefoot kids, most of us have enjoyed the experience of wading lake
shallows or small creeks while turning over rocks to catch the scary
claw-waving "mudbugs" lurking beneath. Most of us, too, have discovered
those claws are just as dangerous as they look. Let a big one get hold
of your finger and he'll draw blood, not to mention considerable terror
while you try to pry or sling him loose. If you want to hand-grab
crawfish, approach slowly from behind and then quickly grab the 'dad
with finger and thumb just behind the claws, about where their "ribs"
should be - and hang tight!. This approach is for the youthful and
devoted, however, since most crawdads will back-scull beyond reach just
before you make your grab.

Some advantage in hand-grabbing crawdads can be gained by hunting them
at night. Like their saltwater relatives, light-sensitive crawfish are
mainly nocturnal bottom scavengers which abandon their lairs mostly in
darkness. They also move into lakeshore shallows at night where they can
be seen and approached with a flashlight. As in nocturnal frog hunting,
crawfish are mildly "hypnotized" by a strong light beam and can be
grabbed with greater ease. Just don't move your hand fast in nearby
water, since those long, ever-waving antennae are as sensitive as they
look.

Day or night, a more effective way of gathering crawfish is to toss out
a piece of fish or other meat on a string, leave it a while, then slowly
draw it to the surface. One to several crawdads will usually be clinging
to the bait and are easily caught by slipping a long-handled net under
them. With this method you can "pot-shot" individual crawfish you've
spotted as effectively as you can "fish blind" in deeper water.

Commercial crawfishermen usually employ traps of one kind or another.
You can either make or buy crawdad traps, and you'll need several if you
want to gather lots of mudbugs in a hurry. One trap form is a cylinder
or cube of ¼" wire mesh with a screen "funnel" leading into the
interior, which is baited with a fish head or other meat scrap. As long
as the crawfish can't get at the food directly through the screen, he
keeps poking around till he finds the funnel, crawls through, and then
can't find his way out again. Such traps are simply lowered into deep
water, buoy-marked, and picked up after an hour or so.

Another crawdad trap is a small version of the popular "crab rings" used
in the ocean. This trap consists of a wire mesh or cloth net strung on a
rigid square or circular metal frame a foot or two across. Folding or
collapsing sides a few inches high are tied to a line which leads to the
surface. The trap is baited in its center, lowered to the bottom,
buoy-marked, and retrieved later by the attached line. Since crab-ring
traps aren't enclosed as are funnel traps, it's important to haul up
pretty fast so crawdads won't have time to crawl or swim over the sides.
Euell Gibbons, the late wildfoods forager extraordinaire, agrees
freshwater crawfish are an unsurpassed inland delicacy. He caught
hundreds of mudbugs for his own table wherever he traveled and for a
time was a commercial crawfisher here in the Northwest. He used about a
dozen of the crab-ring traps described above and regularly took 20 to 50
crawdads per haul. He claims 1000 crawfish per day wasn't uncommon, and
his commercial success was limited only by a lack of market for his tiny
delicacies.

(SEE: Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons)

Whatever method you use to catch crawfish in sufficient numbers to eat,
you still have the task of cleaning them. Basically, all the meat is in
the tail. You can quickly twist the tail off upon catching the crawdad
and feed the forward half to enthusiastic fish. (This saves you worrying
about "escapees" or getting pinched by a bucket full of bristling
claws.) Or, you can bring your entire catch home alive and dispatch them
by brief submersion in boiling water, at which time you still must twist
the tail portion free. It may or may not be more cruel, but I prefer the
former method.

http://www.idfishnhunt.com/crawfish.htm