Crayfish trap

[CRAZY FROG]

Has anyone used a Crayfish Trap & how did you get on with ir?

 

[Shewie]

We used one with a half opened tin of tuna and got around a dozen over night. Two or three were too small for eating but the rest were good, a couple of beauties in there too.

 

[mr dazzler]

Are they always safe to eat? Can they be sucesptible to pollution as with mussels etc?

 

[wattsy]

i don't think so because they aren't filter feeders. mussels filter feed so they concentrate toxins in them whereas crayfish are predators. check for certain though better safe than sorry

 

[Adze]

Need a licence for 'fixed engines' in England and Wales - not likely to be issued to individuals on an occasional basis these days. Contact the EA for more details.

There's some quite serious fines for interfering with the native white claw crayfish too... in the order of £5k - which is a pretty big ouch.

The simplest method for catching signals is to make a drop net out of an old bicycle wheel and an old angling keepnet/landing net. Weight the rim and the centre of the net and bait it with something meaty (dead fish, chicken carcass from yesterday's roast, onion sack of Bakers complete filched from the dog's cupboard), preferably well attached as they will carry it off if it's not tethered. Then sit and wait for some minutes - exactly how many depends on how many are in the water you're at - before hauling the net in and grabbing the crays before them escape. I caught 19 good fat ones from a Kennet carrier using the above method in about 30 minutes some years back.

 

[Adze]

Forgot to mention... when you peel the tails, remove the gorge (gut) which looks like a black line running from stem to stern and you can pretty much ignore any worries about toxins. If you decide to ignore that advice, be aware that one of the reasons for the signal cray's success is that it will eat practically anything and that in eating the gorge you're eating what the cray has already eaten.

The claws are definitely worth bothering with - on an average sized male (15cms or so) there's at least as much meat in the claws as the tail.

 

[gowersponger]

brilliant methood from that man. old bike rim and bit of net save your self 17 quid and it sinks and lays on the bottom betta than the bought ones to