Fishing Forum

Man they gotta do something about the crawfish problem in Strawberry. We went campintg over the weekend with my best buddy and his kids. The objective was a big crawdad feast and we were not disipointed. The first night we just walked along the shore till we found a small break in the weed bed and hucked a piece of chicken out about 8 feet. After a few minutes we would pull the line slowly up and scoop the daddies up with a net. We started out doing ok and progressed to where 16 crawdads per scoop was the norm.. About an hour later with 3/4 of a bucket full we started home. The next day was more of the same with us filling another 5 gal bucket till they started to crall out the top. Same place, same method, throw the chicken out, we used 3 pieces this time and just wait for the white chicken to disapear from view. That means it's covered with crawdads and your just feeding them. It took about an hour with 3 lines to fill a 5 gal bucket.

1 box old bay seasoning
2 cans of beer, 1 if you can't spare 2
3 lbs small red potatoes
2 onions quartered,
2 lemons halved and squeesed
1 doz ears of corn
1 lb spicy sausage
1 1/2 gallon bucket of crawfish tails Already cleaned and shelled. (one camper didn't fish but Carl cleaned evcery one of the crawfish by him self. Delivering them to the cook washed and shelled.

Boil, starting with the potatoes and onions and old bay, add the sausage after 5 min and the corn after another 5 min. Then the crawdads for another 10 minutes and it's done, serve with butter and lots of napkins and wipes by draining the boil and spreading the whole 10 gal pot out on a table.

To do this just place some 2x4's at the 4 edges of the table and cover with a disposable plastic tarp. I used a piece of 6 mil. When the mess is over just pick it all up like a big bag and throw it away.
[signature]

[font "Comic Sans MS"][black][size 3]Nice! Any size to your daddies?[/size][/black][/font]
[signature]

Many in the 5 " range. Thats the funny thing, very few small crayfish. I think they all get canibilised.
[signature]

[font "Comic Sans MS"][black][size 3]Thanks for the great mudbug report, Troll![/size][/black][/font]
[signature]

Hey that's good eatin'...

Were you on the Strawberry side or the Soldier Creek side? we're looking to drop some cages out over the Labor Day weekend and would like to find the "big-ens"

thanks
[signature]

We were at the Soldier Creek side, staying at Aspen Grove Campground. I don't think where you go matters much, there were so many, we fished about 10' of shoreline and caught more than enough, I can only imagine that the whole lake is the same.
[signature]

[size 1]"Man they gotta do something about the crawfish problem in Strawberry." Curious what you meant by this statement? [/size]
[signature]

thanks again for the report... working over a mess of "C-dads" kind of breaks up a great day of catchin fish and has quickly become a family tradition at the Berry over the past 5-6 years.

Also I have been curious if anyone knows what the c-daddys do during the winter months? I've yet to run into one while ice fishing... just a thought-
[signature]

Hey, thanks for the report. Crawdaddin is a tradition with us as well. I'll be heading up this weekend to bring home a mess of daddies hopefully.
[signature]

I think they burrow into the mud an inch or so and hibernate. I imagine a few crawl around but they probably don't eat much due to their slowed down systems. Now is when they are most active. Water temp is between 67 and 70.
[signature]

[url "javascript: addTag('cool')"][cool][/url][#0000ff]It may be different, on different waters, but I have hooked them while dunking bait through the ice in the winter. That leads me to believe that they do not all hibernate.[/#0000ff]
[#0000ff][/#0000ff]
[#0000ff]In Stampede Reservoir, in the Sierras, between Reno and Sacramento, it was common to catch crawdads through the ice if you fished one of the shallow bays. We stopped there for awhile each trip to harvest a few, and then we peeled the tails and tipped our small spoons with them to fish other spots. Got some big rainbows and browns on those babies.[/#0000ff]
[signature]

I agree, my brother and I have caught them through the ice too and most of those we've caught have been at Strawberry on the Solder Creek side or Scolfield. Some of those tiny bites arent always shishies. Most we've brought up have simply been holding on to the bait. The trick to getting them to the hard deck (if you believe its a crawdad) is to bring your line up very slowly so you can feel their weight all the way up. >> Pesty bug-ger's..
[signature]