My Dad, two of my Brothers and two of my cousins and I stopped by Ririe to dive for crawfish on our way up to Victor for our family reunion. This is the third year we've dived for crawfish up at Ririe. The crawfish were a little harder to find this year but I think it might be due to the high water, they are just spread out more. We ended up catching just over 200 crawfish this year down from 600 last year. Another interesting thing I noticed this year is the number of bass is way down, but the ones we saw are a lot bigger than the last two years. Most of the bass I was able to get a good look at had wounds around their mouths, I'm thinking from being caught and released several times. We were diving near the boat ramp were there is a lot of fishing pressure. I added several nice lures to my tackle box, snaged on submerged trees. Nothing better than fresh Idaho lobster.
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thanks for the report. I got into that last summer and it was a blast. I've been kind of chomping at the bit to get out there, but I've been waiting for the water to warm up. So, how cold was it?
Maybe I'll see you up there some time.
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Good Job. How long do you leave your baits in the water before you start diving?
Windriver
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When I first got in I didn't think I was going to be able to last long it felt really cold. But after a few minutes I got used to it. If you went below about ten feet or so the water got really really cold. And after about an hour of diving I started to get numb so I called it a day.
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It only takes about ten minutes or so for crawfish to start eating your bait. But if you wait half an hour or so there will be a nice pile of them on your bait. Last year there was so many that after about an hour and a half some of the baits were completely eaten, with dozens of crawfish waiting in line to be caught. Its an absolute blast if you've never tried it before I highly recommend it.
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So what gear are you using? and how clear is the water?
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The water was a little more milky than normal, you could see probably 15 feet. As for gear I tie a fish head or other fish parts to a brick, then I tie some cord to a pop bottle about 15 feet or so. Set them next to some rock piles wait about 30 minutes, then use snorkel gear and dive down and scoop them up. Come back to the same brick 15 minutes later and scoop up some more. We also made some floating baskets so you don't have to hold onto a bag to put them in, you just surface, throw your crawfish in a basket and then dive back down for more.
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