Easy crayfish trap

Saw a crayfish trap the other day that was super, easy and cheap to make and easy to disguise as rubbish if thats needed in your area.

Take some chicken wire (small size mesh) and form a tube out of it. About three ft long by two ft wide. take one end and wire it together, leaving each end unwired, about two or three inches. Then take the unwired ends and poke them up into the tube to form funnels.

They are how the crays will get into your trap.

The top end is left unwired, just squeeze it together and hold it closed with some twine or a little bungee cord.

The top end is left out of the water so the trap is just leaned against a bank or the like so its mostly upright. Then bait as normal and wait. Being make of chicken wire you can camouflage it with dead grass or water weeds to look like jetsom so no one steals it.

Hopefully I have explained it well enough for you to see it but as soon as I get some excess wire I will make one and take pickies.

Oh, and if you havnt had crayfish, they are really nice! Just boiled or steamed and served with garlic butter and garlic toast. Mmmmmmmmm

Just don't forget you need a licence to take crayfish in the UK.

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:Just don't forget you need a licence to take crayfish in the UK.

Why is that Billy? Surely they want to get RID of them over there

But point well taken, one needs a fishing licence over here to fish for crays. Unless (in Florida at least) one is fishing from the bank or a dock.

They don't discourage it, GB, but there are regulations covering it - you cannot put any back in the river for example. The licence is for a specific stretch of water as well, not a blanket licence.

Is there not something about indiginous crayfish & escaped crayfish which are eating them?

polgara wrote:Is there not something about indigenous crayfish & escaped crayfish which are eating them?

Red Signal Crayfish carry crayfish pox. Your native crays have no protection against it. And even if they survive the disease the RSC is bigger and stronger and more aggressive so yep, its gunna eat the natives too.

But its mostly the pox thats wiped the natives out

GB wrote:.......

But its mostly the pox thats wiped the natives out

Hmmm native Americans getting their own back........

Wilhelm Von Rhomboid wrote:Just don't forget you need a licence to take crayfish in the UK.

I know you need a license to trap crayfish, but I've seen some discussion on whether you need a licence to catch them without a trap.

What would be handy is a guide to where to catch them: which rivers are good, and which aren't.

http://data.nbn.org.uk/gridMap/gridMap.jsp?allDs=1&srchSpKey=NHMSYS0000377494

And

http://data.nbn.org.uk/index_homepage/index.jsp

These both seem most useful

If you don't have the wherewithall to make your own, inexpensive traps can be bought: http://www.ronniesunshines.com/crayfish-trap-crab-fish-p-1052.html

http://www.therange.co.uk/invt/395831/&bklist=

chickenofthewoods wrote:If you don't have the wherewithall to make your own, inexpensive traps can be bought: http://www.ronniesunshines.com/crayfish-trap-crab-fish-p-1052.html

http://www.therange.co.uk/invt/395831/&bklist=

I'm told a bit of bacon on a string works fairly well.

The ultimate in inexspensive!

the best method I have found is to take a chicken carcass from which you have stripped most of the meat and tie it on a piece os string. Leave it ten minutes and it will come up heaving with the blighters.

And you're not "trapping" them that way either.

I agree with catching crayfish, as they are a nuisance in Britain, with their killing off of the native variety [and I like eating them.] However, if you catch a few on the line, you still have to have a safe means of bringing them home to cook. Do you really want them crawling round your car? They can survive out of water, which is why I spotted one in the moat at Dunham Massey [North Cheshire], a landlocked piece of water only occasionally connected with a stream, last year.

frankbeswick wrote:...... However, if you catch a few on the line, you still have to have a safe means of bringing them home to cook. Do you really want them crawling round your car? .......

Was that meant seriously?

When as a kid used to go after "crawdads" would knock them off the bait into a bucket and carry them home that way. Never used a trap for them. Most places the brook would be too shallow except in the pools and the crawdads all over.

Now crabs, yeah, traps for those.

Bacon on a string definitely works, did that all the time as a kid.

I didn't think we had crayfish in the UK (I grew up in US and Canada) so now I'm chuffed! My gumbo hasn't tasted the same without some crayfish tails in it.

I usually put mine in a bucket of water for 24 hours to clean out their systems (some people suggest a little cornmeal instead). Deveining the tails is a bugger so giving them a bit of time to clear out their systems as it were works for me.

So tempted to haunt the local waterways now....

Hathorite wrote:Bacon on a string definitely works, did that all the time as a kid.

I didn't think we had crayfish in the UK (I grew up in US and Canada) so now I'm chuffed! My gumbo hasn't tasted the same without some crayfish tails in it.

I usually put mine in a bucket of water for 24 hours to clean out their systems (some people suggest a little cornmeal instead). Deveining the tails is a bugger so giving them a bit of time to clear out their systems as it were works for me.

So tempted to haunt the local waterways now....

I have read that if you gently break the end of the tail off and pull, the vein will come out in one piece but thats on a raw (and I suspect a live) one and I dont know if they taste the same if one kills them first and then cooks just the tail.

I never liked them until I got them at a Chinese buffet. They were always served so spicy that they had no flavor of their own but this lot were just steamed with a bit of ginger and garlic.

YUM!

Am still looking for a good place to drop some traps but with the boat out of commission STILL its hard to get to where they are. Never mind, when health allows I have a list of about 8 places to try in the mornings when the kids are all at school. Well, one has to find the best places to fish BEFORE taking the kids out, right?

I have just had an email from the Environment Agency.
If you want to catch crayfish with a line, then you may not need a license, but it is best to talk to your local fisheries officer to ask.
It is worth doing that anyway, since they are likely to know where the best fishing is.

There is a fellow in southern Scotland who has found a loch infested with crayfish.He was on television doing his hunting. He hunts there when he likes and the owner has no interest in his activities. He gave not his name, the loch nor the owner. None is the wiser and none the worst for his enterprises

frankbeswick wrote:There is a fellow in southern Scotland who has found a loch infested with crayfish.He was on television doing his hunting. He hunts there when he likes and the owner has no interest in his activities. He gave not his name, the loch nor the owner. None is the wiser and none the worst for his enterprises

Sounds a clever fellow!