Was at Strawberry and seen a man pull up with a trailer full of traps. He was all alone. Probably had 25 -30 traps. As I understand a guy can only have five lines. Hand lines traps Ect.. I asked him about it and he said he talked to a conservation officer . And they told him he could have as many traps as he wanted. But only five hand lines. Am I misunderstanding the proclamation? Or was he ok. I was not sure so I didn't argue with him. Clarification would be great if anyone knows.
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I was looking at the 2017 guide and it does say you can use only five lines. However, in a the previous paragraph it describes several methods including traps it only refers to lines in one method. It would be hard to argue that lines include traps or nets the way it is written. In the south they often use sticks to raise the nets and traps. I would not be surprised if the intension was to not have a bunch of lines that are easily forgotten laying all around. I don't know just guessing.
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The point is the intent, if he's going to try and sell game meat to restaurants without a permit he's going to have a bad time. Or at least, he should.
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I also think that whole crawdads cannot be taken from the waters they were caught. I assume tails only. I will review the rule again.
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I sent an email to the fish and game before I made my crawfish traps and they replied that there is no limit on the amount of traps, but requested that I don't be wasteful. I was going to build 10 traps, but got lazy and ended up with 4. Lol. The regulation just says you can't transport "live" crawfish. [fishon]. For specifics, always check the regulations and contact the DNR directly with questions. Sounds like that guy did exactly what I would have done. I still have the email reply I received. [fishon]
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25-30 traps is more like commercial trapping and as far as I know there isn't any dispensation for selling wild game to restaurants in Utah. I don't think there's any way one single family could trap 25 traps worth of crawfish in one day and not be either wasting most of them or giving/selling them to someone. There's a lot of crawfish in Strawberry but if a bunch of guys start trapping 20-30 traps worth of bugs a few times a week I doubt they're going to be as numerous as they are now. Don't forget that the only reason there's so many is that they're not high on the menu for trout, if they get decimated they won't recover fast because the food/environment situation isn't ideal for crawfish in any Utah mountain lakes.
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This sounds like the scenario that played out at Yuba years ago when the jumbo perch were so plentiful. You would see guys with 100, 200, 300 Jumbos in their ice sleds coming off the ice. There was no way they could process that many perch unless they had a production facility equipped to handle the volume. Doing that many, at home in your sink ?? You would be standing there for 6,7,8 hours, after standing on the ice for that long. It was wasteful and should have been stopped.
The biggest problem with 20-30 crawdad traps is that you CANNOT transport live crayfish from the place you catch them. If you are going to use that many, you have to be able to transport them LIVE, or take the tails off. So again, you go out and catch say 50lbs of dads, then stand at the cleaning station for 2-3 hours taking the tails off, RIGHT ! or, you can break the law and transport them live !! Not a smart idea. Maybe they are going to have a big party on the lake, but usually they have a bunch of kids using hand lines to catch the critters having fun.
I take my grandkids out, run 4 traps and 3 handlines. We fish for a couple of hours, process say 10lbs, which takes at least an hour. That is a long day and a lot of standing. 20-30 traps is ludicrous !!!
I agree 100%. To take that many bugs it would take you forever. He told me he had camp set up at the lake. As far as transporting them. He really wasn't. If just moving to his camp on the lake. I understand why the transporting of them is illegal. But you can order live bugs online .And have them shipped right to your front door. Which really made no sense to me. Are they different variety than in are lakes?
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I've caught and processed 50-75 pounds of crawdads at a time at soldier creek lots of times. Stood at the cleaning station for quite a while doing it, but with 3 boys helping and going fast it isn't that big of a task. It looks like an insane amount of crawdads while they are in the coolers alive, but they break down into several gallon size ziplock bags and they never go to waste in our house. Boil them before freezing them or they turn grainy and crumbly.
Mike
P.s. We were running 12 traps during the day and catching them by hand at night. Kids love it and we get enough for many good meals.
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So, with help, you could do the job, but by yourself, how long ??? I suppose you could boil the lot at the lake and then ice the cooked critters down for transport, that would be a possibility, but still, that is a lot of dads. More power to you if you can process that many.
As long as he is not breaking the law,, I say go for it. Everybody has their own style of fishing.
As far as filleting 300 jumbo perch. That should take one guy about 30 or 40 minutes if he knows how to fillet. Maybe less.
A real pro does not rinse before packaging so that part don't take long either.
Then add 2 minutes to toss all scrapes in your neighbors trash can and your done in less than an hour..
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