Northwest Fishing Reports

I've been trying to trap crawfish around lower granite reservoir. having some success, but noticing that a lot of them are die shortly after capture. I'm told not to boil the dead ones. Has anyone else noticed the same thing happening or am I doing anything wrong. I pull the traps, put them in a cooler, then will put them in shallow water at home for a few hours to give them time to poop out the grit. It seems like the bigger ones (some are like lobsters i.e. around 7 inches long) are more likely to croak. I'm wondering if these are old crawfish that are senescent and that the mortality should be expected. The bigger craws on seem to not have much more tail meat than the medium craws, so that suggests to me that they are not in good condition.

Is the water in the cooler alot colder than the water you are catching them in? Quick change in temps will kill them.

Water temp in the snake is 60-64. I didn't have any added water in the cooler. I was thinking rapid temp change might be the problem, but I don't think they got too much temperature shock. With crawfish I've purchased that I think are red crawfish, seems like they do fine as long as they are kept moist. Maybe the native signal crayfish are less hardy? i don't have much experience...

rwl wrote:I've been trying to trap crawfish around lower granite reservoir. having some success, but noticing that a lot of them are die shortly after capture. I'm told not to boil the dead ones. Has anyone else noticed the same thing happening or am I doing anything wrong. I pull the traps, put them in a cooler, then will put them in shallow water at home for a few hours to give them time to poop out the grit. It seems like the bigger ones (some are like lobsters i.e. around 7 inches long) are more likely to croak. I'm wondering if these are old crawfish that are senescent and that the mortality should be expected. The bigger craws on seem to not have much more tail meat than the medium craws, so that suggests to me that they are not in good condition.

Howdy,
Hopefully this may help for your catch next year. First thing, crawfish CAN stand rapid temp changes but they DO have high oxygen demands. With this in mind, store and transfer your crawfish in burlap bags or the like, with wet towels covering them. If you have access to ice then apply ice on top of the towels. Properly handling crawfish can often give you a 2 week out of water shelf life. OK, your first mistake was putting the crawfish in a cooler where oxygen is limited to the crawfish on the bottom an that was probably where your bigger ones ended up. I don't classify a 7" crawfish as older especially in the Snake, they are just mature and they get much much bigger, grin.

Second mistake was not cooking them as soon as you got home. Devein instead of trying to purge them.

Terry Bullard

I'm going to second Terry's comments. I see people do this with crab all the time and wonder why the crab are dead by the time they get home. Unless you are going to aerate the water, store all fish and crustaceans you catch on ice and process/cook as soon as possible. By the way, if you have some crayfish perish because they "froze" to death in the ice, they are still OK to cook and eat.

If you are gonna eat them right away put them on ice. If they are bait a burlap sack and lake water will keep them fresh. I used to use them for bait and wanted to keep them alive.

They are all right. Think about if someone locked you in a small airtight room, and you could only poo and pee in your air, and you had to breathe it in. It's the same concept. Fish breathe the oxygen in the water and exhale carbon dioxide and ammonia and other nasty stuff that rely on air and a lot of water to keep it filtered in the wild. I used to keep crawdads as pets when I was younger, in a big aquarium. You also need de-chlorinated water and a filter or a bubbler, preferably both if you're going to keep them alive for very long. But if you don't overcrowd the tank you can keep 'em alive for years. I fed them goldfish.

I have never deviened them though. It's all part of the experience. You're going to suck the head, you might as well eat their crap.

Thanks for the info guys. I ended up getting a battery powered air bubbler and kept them in water in a cooler and they stayed alive just fine. Even after getting them home. But it seems that they don't seem to purge themselves, so keeping them in water after coming home doesn't accomplish anything.

I'm still getting the hang of this crawfish trapping. I put a time lapse camera on one of my traps and I could see that the crayfish go in and out of the trap with ease. I'm thinking of putting some camoflage like strips of cloth or something on the traps so that the crayfish don't feel as exposed, that way they may stay in the trap longer.

What kind of traps are you using that they come and go from so easily?

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This is how they do it in the factories. You have to purge them over night to notice a difference, changing the water often. Otherwise they'll eat that stuff right up again. Change the water until the water is clean. Makes a big difference. That's what I do with my craws that I eat. I've got a fish tank that I use for it, with a filter and I fill it up two or more times. But I have lots of fish tanks, the same can be done in a cooler with a drain. Just don't use chlorinated water, it kills them, it burns their gills and suffocates them.

So you're seeing them climb into the little tiny hole and then back out? That's pretty impressive, when I put out my traps and come back they are stuffed to the gills with the pinchy little bastards and it takes a lot of doing to get 'em to come out. They pack themselves in like sardines, sculpins swim in and get eaten and become more bait which draws more in and it's a giant mess of pincers and sculpin heads by the time I get back after fishing. They don't leave.

I've been using these Promar collapsible traps. I have heard that crayfish get in and out of all traps pretty easily and have been experimenting with closing off the hole more or less, but this doesn't seem to have any effect. What impressed me is that the crawfish can go straight into the trap and straight out without without looking around much for an exit.

I'm definitely in the learning phase but what I've generally found is that either the traps are really full, empty, or have just a few crawfish in them. Location doesn't seem to matter that much because traps will come up empty even in a productive area. I leave them out for a few days before checking. My current idea is that if the trap gets full, then the crawfish will stay in there because they feel safe in numbers or don't want to leave because there are other crawfish there and don't want someone else to get something they won't get or they fight with each other so much that it makes it hard for them to escape.

My other idea is that generally they don't want to go or stay into the trap because it is exposed, but if there was cover on the trap so they are less visible they would stay in longer. Definitely I trap more craws around my best smallmouth spots (no surprise there).