crayfish problems

visited a new venue with some history of some good fish but the owner said there a lot of crayfish in there just wondered if any of the forum have fished such a water and encountered the cray fish eating your baits and ways and methods of getting round this ........

i have fished on venues were crayfish have taken my carp bait even when using popped up rigs. if you can get a trapping license from the EA you could get yourself some top free food. i have been trying for about 18 months to get one, its free but the EA seem to take there time in getting it sorted there are areas on my local canal were you can see them on the bottom in there 10s and 20s. its a problem that is here to stay all we as anglers can do is try to put up with our bait being stolen. if we are lucky enough to be able, take as many of them out the water as we can and eat the little sods.

big pete wrote:i have fished on venues were crayfish have taken my carp bait even when using popped up rigs. if you can get a trapping license from the EA you could get yourself some top free food. i have been trying for about 18 months to get one, its free but the EA seem to take there time in getting it sorted there are areas on my local canal were you can see them on the bottom in there 10s and 20s. its a problem that is here to stay all we as anglers can do is try to put up with our bait being stolen. if we are lucky enough to be able, take as many of them out the water as we can and eat the little sods.

are they swimmers ie say you poped your bait up say 4ft would they still have it

Fish a Loch thats full of the american sygnal crayfish in new galloway. I just use a polly ball to lift of the bottom and don't have problem. if put on the bottom bait gone in first minute.

jms248 wrote:Fish a Loch thats full of the american sygnal crayfish in new galloway. I just use a polly ball to lift of the bottom and don't have problem. if put on the bottom bait gone in first minute.

how far do you pop them off pal

about the 2ft mark if a lot weed bit more. only been fishing for about a year and fished this water a fair bit and it works for me. And they say the cray fish there are in the millions

Even popping up baits isn't foolproof as on some waters the crays have learnt how to pull / walk the baits down with their claws. Only suggestion i have is to floatfish baits a foot or so off the deck where they cant reach them.

tootall wrote:Even popping up baits isn't foolproof as on some waters the crays have learnt how to pull / walk the baits down with their claws. Only suggestion i have is to floatfish baits a foot or so off the deck where they cant reach them.

thanks for the info was thinking pop up or suspended not fished the water yet so dont know how bad the problem is yet

Try a Paternoster Rig with one of those underwater transparent sunk floats, to keep the rig suspended at the correct height off the bottom. Eg.. use a length of low breaking strain line say about 8lb, with a bomb on the very end. I use about 3 or 4 feet of that line, then comes the paternoster rig with a trace attached about 12" long, from the top of that the rig a very strong mono with swivel at the end about 2' long ( comes in a pack when I buy them, Fox I think I have ). Main line then tied to swivel with sunk float attached to main line a short way up. In that way your bait will be way off the bottom with the sunk float above and your main line going back at an angel to the rod. I'm sure someone else can explain it better than me lol.

thanks for the feed back will try these hopefully this weekend

stubbo wrote:thanks for the feed back will try these hopefully this weekend

hope so!

catchafishy123 wrote:

stubbo wrote:thanks for the feed back will try these hopefully this weekend

hope so!

not looking good for sunday up to now

I would guess at an American signal crayfish,as they are the most common,they have the large red claws.

Defo a signal crayfish

tootall wrote:Defo a signal crayfish

do you no if they are good to eat

They are supposed to be very nice to eat Stubbo

they do make good eating, but you need a licence from the EA to remove them from any water, and if you have any pockets of indigenous crayfish in the area, they are highly unlikely to grant it. i know this from bitter experience, i know where a good head of them are locally, applied but got turned down.

i read a few posts on a shooting forum i use about them - this got me interested in having a go, but no joy for me!

here are some links to the posts on the shooting forum about them

bit about the licencing situation:

http://forums.pigeonwatch.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/217556-crayfish-licence-denied-because-there-are-too-many-non-native/page__hl__crayfish


general thread about cooking / processing them
http://forums.pigeonwatch.co.uk/forums/index.php?/topic/214929-crayfishing-with-bakerboy-ii-cooking/page__hl__crayfish

boil one up on the bank and try it, bet the claws are nice. think you just chuck em in boiling water to cook em dont you?

rozzo wrote:boil one up on the bank and try it, bet the claws are nice. think you just chuck em in boiling water to cook em dont you?

i think they need to be purged before cooking and eating, basically no food in clean water so they empty out.