CRAWDADS!!

[bloonskiller911]

so since it seems like our community has a knowledge base for everything i need some help!!! i have crawdads digging around my spillway of my pond. in fact they had started the pond to drain. i have tamped their holes and tried to weed all the rocks and things out to deter them from being in the area. nothing works!!! the are draining my acre and half pond, its down a good 8 inches, my spillway pipe has even dropped!! any idea of how to get rid/kill/deter them. i have tried salting the area and even killed all of the grass. i even chlorinated the water to see if that would drive them a way to no avail!!! please help me!!

 

[Spifflove]

anyone have any suggestions??

Yes.

 

[Ole and Lena]

Get a couple of the wire mesh minnow traps, the cylinder kind. Mash the ends down to make a bit of an oval shape from the round they come in. Open up the entrance holes to a 2"X1" oval shape. Bait them with liver or bloody beef bones, rancid hamburger or fish guts. Set them underwater overnight where crawdads are known to congregate.

Boil your crawdads in saltwater until they turn bright red, crack open the tails, remove meat with shrimp or crabfork and dip in cayenne garlic butter.

Won't eradicate them entirely, but once you aquire a taste for the little devils, you'll have no problem managing the population. There are also commercial crayfish traps but I've found the modified minnow traps just as effective and much easier to find locally.

I wish I had your "problem". For some reason I can't get them established in my swamp. Might be too shallow, prone to deep freezing in winter.

 

[el pollo rey]

Ducks geese and large mouth bass ?

 

[Katesdad]

I love crawdads, good eatin! I catch them with bacon with minnow traps. You can make your own traps out of hardware cloth. Happy trapping!

 

[el pollo rey]

The minnow traps work well and other variety of home made hardware cloth traps work well and are cheap to make a chunk of fish will work as bait when I was young growing up on lake erie catching and selling them to bait shops was a kids summer industry ,,,,

 

[Ole and Lena]

Also, if your pond is deep and cold enough to support smallmouth bass they are voracious crayfish eaters. If it's on the warm side, largemouth will eat some but they prefer frogs, minnows and bugs. I'd still trap them. They are tasty. As far as mitigating damage to your spillway, you may have to draw the pond down, excavate, replace softer clay with hard packed class 5 mixed with trap rock. Not fun, but once the damage is done it will continue to seep. Also keep the muskrats trapped out. There bank runs do a lot of damage and make more habitat for crawdads.

 

[el pollo rey]

Small mouth luv um for sure that is what we sold them to bait shops for when I was young the small mouth fisherie in lake erie ,, huge smallies . Good luk

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Bloonskiller, I’m just visiting from over at the Emu Section. I’m in Western Australia, and I have heard that some farmers use poison to deal with crawdads (‘yabbies’ here) that burrow.

It may be, if you are serious enough, that you can learn which species will ‘eat out’ which other species – not all species burrow. (One Australian species is called ‘destructor’ because it burrows.)

Personally, I’d be far far more inclined to learn how to breed them – at least the right species. Make a sauce with chilli, honey, coriander, and tamari. Lightly boil the crawdads, and extract the meat. Learn how to make a bed of cous cous (with lemon). Steam broccoli.

If you serve your guests spiced crawdad meat and steamed broccoli on a bed of cous cous, you’ll have them lined up.

Supreme Emu

 

[Bush Chickens]

awwww... :{ i want a pet crawdad...