Catching Crawfish??

[A9]

They can be found shallow a lot. Wherever there is cover and a food source, they'll be there. I start flipping over rocks from when I wade in when it's knee deep and keep working out to like 15-20 feet of water where it's tough to get all the way down to the rocks, and you gotta flip over rocks fast and then get back up before you run outta air.


Some people eat em. I don't have much of an appetite for them, but it seems like once a year I'll go diving and flip rocks for em and put a bunch of the bigger ones in the bucket and boil em up....

[Fisherman_max]

i am lucky, my uncle lives on the "little washougal" river (smaller creek that runs into the washougal) and they have tons of craws there, none are very big but if you tie a string onto a hotdog and put the hotdog in the water and tie the string to a tree or rock you can come back to 10-20 craws milling around the hot dog.


another bait you can use is small fresh water clams! break em open then set them in the water and they seem to work better than anything else.

[bpm2000]

If you want a fun/different way, just jump in the lake with some goggles and go down and flip some rocks upside down and there will be plenty of craws under there. Pick em up, go to surface, check em out, and throw em back down (or in a bucket if your keeping them)

I do this a bit in the summer at some spots in Lake Washington for fun. Just throw on goggles and go flip rocks to see how many you can find while swimming around on a nice day....Sometimes you'll find some MONSTROUS craws that look like lobsters when you flip a rock over and they come scooting out.....

Often times a smallmouth (or a few) will realize that I'm helping them get an easy meal and will just follow me and will catch the craws that come out from the rocks...Didn't realize they were that smart to know that I'm there to help them. I can literally get face to face with them and sometimes they are digging their heads under the rock that I'm flipping before it's even flipped over...

i met this one kid at coulon that was flipping rocks in the shallows. he was saying they go shallow to have there babys and you can get a ton at that time. i havent ate them since i lived in NC do people eat the ones they catch out here?

there is a small commercial fishery for 'dads in lake washington. I always see them in the summer during the mornings pulling up their pots. So yes. :D

[A9]

bpm: where do they drop their pots? I'm just wondering cause I've never heard of the commercial fishery out there and I've never seen many floats out there either....

[fishnislife]

There are places all over Lk. Wa. that they hit up. The North end can have a lot. But to avoid theft and getting pulled some have gone to multiple pots on one string (kind of like Deadliest Catch) and then dragging an anchor to pull up the string. Others have sub-surface buoys. And they GPS there location. Might be why you don't see to many. Another good spot is to the right after the condos on the water if you launch out of Atlantic City Boat Ramp.



fishnislife

[shawn]

Down South we used to take chicken wire and make envelope shape out of it and keep a corner of the envelope open.Bait it with fish and corn onthe cob and let soak in your area come back and retrive.

[fishnislife]

Down South we used to take chicken wire and make envelope shape out of it and keep a corner of the envelope open.Bait it with fish and corn onthe cob and let soak in your area come back and retrive.

You know, I have seen some big ones out at Island. Have you caught any out of there?



fishnislife

[A9]

There are places all over Lk. Wa. that they hit up. The North end can have a lot. But to avoid theft and getting pulled some have gone to multiple pots on one string (kind of like Deadliest Catch) and then dragging an anchor to pull up the string. Others have sub-surface buoys. And they GPS there location. Might be why you don't see to many. Another good spot is to the right after the condos on the water if you launch out of Atlantic City Boat Ramp.



fishnislife

I figured they would do that...Too many stupid people probably would otherwise just go pick up the pots for the heck of it....Probably would have to deal a lot with boat traffic as well...

[michaelunbewust]

the poor mans lobster. the ones i catch in the summer at potholes are huge. and whoever mentioned salmon is correct. i always bring a chunk of salmon or my dad has some heads saved. we soak the pots overnight where crab creek enters the resevior. we use those cheapo joe's pots. they always taste great with gobs of butter!!!!=p~

[bpm2000]

yup, like fishnlife said, subsurface buoys and pots all attached with rope/chain. They grapple up a string at a time and do the mini "dealiest catch" deal with them.

[Gisteppo]

Here is my secret, so dont steal my pots...

Use waterwings.

I didnt want to pay $25 for a stupid crawdad float, so I bought 2 water wings for 99c. Not a single pot has been molested (other than ones that catch fish!), and they actually float and hold up remarkably well.

E

[gpc]

All this talk about craws got my mouth watering. They just happened to have some for sale at the QFC. Cooked and frozen, didnt expect a whole lot of flavor. But I also didnt expect them to be down right gross. I just hope I can turn cooked craws into some type of bait.

[lskiles]

Here is my secret, so dont steal my pots...

Use waterwings.

I didnt want to pay $25 for a stupid crawdad float, so I bought 2 water wings for 99c. Not a single pot has been molested (other than ones that catch fish!), and they actually float and hold up remarkably well.

E

Thats great! Who wants those waterwings floating around. Reminds me when I was in highschool I had my cool box of eight-track tapes stolen and then as I replaced them in another real nice carry case they were stolen AGAIN! I had a buddy tell me to put them in a Kotex box...fit just right and never got stolen again. I guess only about half of you will even know what an eight-track is and even fewer ever had one in a car.

[trucknmusic]

Never heard "floaties" called "water wings." I like the idea but I do not know if that is legal... the book says you can't use bottles and such but did not mention anything about water-wings. I'm not planning on leaving them out over night so hopefully they will be ok.

[iPodrodder]

They're the little yellow inflatable things that go around toddlers and small kid's arms when they are in the pool or lake.

[Gisteppo]

its illegal to soak pots overnight. there are no crawdad float regs that i know of.

E

[A9]

its illegal to soak pots overnight. there are no crawdad float regs that i know of.

E

I believe that you can't check pots overnight. Float regs I believe say that you need to have a yellow float with name, address and phone number on it..

[Gisteppo]

my waterwings are yellow, with said same written on them.

Hm, I thought you were supposed to have your gear out of the water during the night.

E

[Fisherman_max]

anybody who has been out to lacamas olake know that there are about 5 or so bottles fixed in the same position every day, some are orange juice cartons and some are milk jugs, but i once saw a guy with his float tube paddle out to one of them and start lifting it up, did not think about it at the time but i think it might have been his float for his crawdad pots.

[lskiles]

anybody who has been out to lacamas olake know that there are about 5 or so bottles fixed in the same position every day, some are orange juice cartons and some are milk jugs, but i once saw a guy with his float tube paddle out to one of them and start lifting it up, did not think about it at the time but i think it might have been his float for his crawdad pots.

Out at Lacamas there are a bunch of floats that belong to one of the colleges that have some sort of testing equipment on them. I have seen them out checking them at times. Once there were a couple of women (not very outdoors, or fit) out doing the checking in a rubber raft and when they came into the boat ramp one of them could barley get out of the raft. It was hilarious. I did help them get there raft out of the water. It was like a bad comedy show. It was fun to watch, but kind of sad.