Crawfishing
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You are currently reading a thread in /out/ - Outdoors
What should I bait these traps with? Also Crawfishing/fish-trapping General.
>>767132
Some sort of meat
Chicken necks
Liver
Use cow fetus, you can get it by just asking a farmer.
>>767132
I've heard fresh chopped fish from the water you're trapping is best. Catch a few, chop, then bait.
>>767132
Scraps work fotr cheap. Just cooked a chicken? Chicken bones. Or other chicken parts if you buy who chikens. Just finish fishing? Cut up bait. Or fish heads. Some people use fish guts but i think that's nasty.
Pretty much whatever you have that stinks.
>>767132
Pretty much any type of meat or fish you can get your hands on.
They are not picky, will eat anything.
from some website:
>Traditionally crayfish traps in most countries are baited with fish. Swedes use sunfish, shiners and herring while Louisiana Cajuns often entice the crawfish with gizzard shad and pogies (menhaden). A commercial crayfisherman on the West Coast catches his crayfish with salmon heads and other oily fish. Lately, I had good luck using salmon trimmings from the local grocery store. For free!
>Yes, fish makes an enticing bait that usually surpasses all other baits. But that doesn’t mean other sources of bait won’t work. For years I bought cheap chicken necks and wings and had very good success with them. One store trimmed their chickens leaving the backs of the birds at a reasonable price. I brought home thousands of crayfish with chicken backs.
>But, as I said, each person has his own opinion about bait. A description about crayfish catching from Finland, a country that knows plenty about catching crayfish, included as good bait "a stealthily shot neighbor's cat". But it also mentions squirrels, chickens and other assorted animals as well as fish from the lake where the fishing takes place.
>>767233
2/3
>But here is a warning. Crayfish bait must be fresh! Contrary to some people’s opinions, crayfish don’t like spoiled, smelly or sour bait, be it fish or meat. I found that out the hard way recently. I had several pieces of turkey necks left over from a successful 1400 catch in the mountains. After four days of keeping the bait unrefrigerated, I froze it after arriving home. Then, some weeks later, I defrosted the old bait and used it in a lake known for its large amount of crayfish. To my great surprise and disappointment, I caught very few crayfish under conditions that usually had been very productive.
>Analyzing the conditions that led to the dismal catch, I came to the conclusion that it was the spoiled bait. I recalled that, as I was baiting the traps, the bait felt slimey and obviously was too far gone to be considered fresh. It was just plain foul fowl!
>A few weeks later I returned to the same lake. This time I brought fresh bait in the form of fresh salmon trimmings from the local food store. With traps located in the same general area, I now had a good catch. I finally believed my friend and crayfish expert who had told me that crayfish demand fresh bait. It's simply a myth that they eat rotten food.
>>767237
3/3
>Another rule about bait is this:
>THE MORE BAIT, THE MORE CRAYFISH!
>Again and again I find that the more bait I put in a trap, the more crayfish I catch. What probably happens is that as soon as the crayfish have eaten all the bait, they simply start looking for a way out of the trap. That explains why a Finnish article about crayfish catching stated that up to 75% of the crayfish in an overnight trap eventually escape. Well, wouldn't YOU start looking for the exit if you either had had your fill or if you found that all the food was gone?
>Many crayfish traps have some kind of an escape stopper, some quite efficient, some not. But here is the solution to crayfish escaping a trap. It has been well documented that as long as a trap has good bait in it, crayfish who have already entered the trap, will stay there while new crayfish still will be entering the trap. Once I discovered this secret, I found that my traps were much more likely to be full of crays, whether the trap had an escape stopper or not. So, keep your traps filled with good bait, and you will catch more crayfish.
>The traditional spiral netted Swedish traps can not be equipped with escape stoppers. Consequently, when I use those traps, I make it a rule to empty them at least every four hours all through the night. That way I get lots of crayfish, but very little sleep...
>>767237
Guy's retarded.
Spoiled meat is fine, but freezing any bait is likely to ruin it.
When I was a kid, I fished literal hundreds of those little bastards with nothing more than a piece of liver, a string and a stick.
I'd leave the bait/stick out in the open overnight and keep using it until it had all rotten out or the crayfish ate the most of it. Never had a problem.
I would just dip the bait in some murky canal, wait a minute or two and pull two or three of these little suckers still claw deep in the bait.
Good times.
>>767244
On second thought, I don't want to know why we had so many crayfishes back then, nor why they had such a taste for entrails.
>>767132
Get a can of cheap, skanky cat food. Stab it with a screwdriver a bunch of times. Done. They can smell the bait, but not eat it all up. Works great, man...
>>767244
>Spoiled meat is fine, but freezing any bait is likely to ruin it.
Why does freezing ruin it?
Roadkill is cheap.
Dry dog food is cleaner to handle.
>>767827
Falls apart.
>>767132
from what i heard get some cans of cat food, punch some holes in it and place inside.
I got some frozen trout heads from my local fish monger, gonna use those and see how it goes.
>>767132
get a couple cans of dog food, the cheap shit is fine, poke some holes in it and put it in, that's how i used to do it. It works better since they cant get to the bait in my experience.
>>767791
Yep, that's been said four times now...
>>767132
Bait with female crawfish, a kind of crawfish brothel.
>paint their claws with nail polish
>all crawladies should wear lipstick
>gotta have your crawstitutes looking properly whoreish
>>767791
>catfood
I tried that once and didn't catch shit. It's not recommended anywhere. All of the sources I am reading are saying use fresh chopped fish. Commercial craw fisheries use this also.
>>767132
cat food and dog food and a piece of pork fat. poke hella holes in the can with a old school opener
>>769330
All true, I seent it myself.
Fuckin bacon. Jesus. Bunch of damn tards.
I found a mixture of rotten fish mixed with flour to hold it together worked amazing.
>>767132
Ahhh the days when I used to use crawdad traps.
I'm not trying to bait you here (yup) but I stopped using traps a long time ago. Just wait til dark, get a net from the dollar store, and walk the shoreline with a flashlight/headlamp. Every place I've ever been with crawdads, they come into the shallows and out from under their rocks as soon as it gets dark. Last time I did it, me and the little guy got about 60 or so in under an hour. More fun too.
>>767132
It seems to me like a locally caught fish of some kind would be best, something that the crawfish would encounter normally.
Mash whole fish to a pulp inside old coffee can or similar, poke holes all over, and it should be perfect to attract craws without being at risk of being eaten.
Alternatively if a can is not available, wrap mashed fish in nylon hosiery or muslin cloth.
>>771061
>I'm not trying to bait you here (yup) but I stopped using traps a long time ago. Just wait til dark, get a net from the dollar store, and walk the shoreline with a flashlight/headlamp. Every place I've ever been with crawdads, they come into the shallows and out from under their rocks as soon as it gets dark. Last time I did it, me and the little guy got about 60 or so in under an hour. More fun too.
I used to to that too as a kid, would catch a few dozen per night, used them for bait next day. It was fun. But I am looking for more like a few hundred now, for eating, not bait. If I can make the traps work well with the right bait then I'm making a trot line with about 10 of them.
