Yep R’s back for another episode in his country life.
As the seasons have passed us by this year, its almost the end of the crayfish season. Whilst the water is warm they’ll be out feeding, but as the temperature drops they become less and less active, to the point that they hibernate when the water temperature gets below 10c.
In many parts of the UK, the American Signal Crayfish have invaded our waters and are decimating the indigenous species that live here. The British Grey Crayfish is almost extinct because the Signal Crayfish carry a viral infection that attacks our own smaller Crayfish, this in turn dwindles the population and increases the invading Signals food supply along the way.
I’ve been out catching a few of these little pests for the table, easily done with little skill involved. You’d better check with your local environmental agency help line for the legality behind fishing for them, as its illegal in some places to fish for them to eat. I take no responsibility for any one getting caught poaching Crayfish…….you have been told.
Any way all you need to get some of these little fellows, are a bit of meat, fresh mackerel or chicken works well, a bucket and a bit of string! Yep, just tie the bait to the string, I’d add a weight to the line to make sure it sinks. Cast your line and bait and wait a few minutes, if the line feels heavier than before heave it in as quickly as possible. Signal Crayfish will clamp down on the bait and not let go, this should allow you enough time to get it to the shore to collect your bounty. If you’re going to go this method, dusk is the best time as they are a bit more responsive in my experience.
If you’re like me and want things a bit easier, then get yourself a crayfish or shrimp net trap. These are available for only a few £’s each. They are a simple double ended trap with a funnel at each end, most of the cheaper ones are collapsible string types, which do the job quite nicely. All I do to make them a bit more usable is ditch the original bit of tethering string, and replace it with approx 4 meters of green paracord. I don’t use the little bait pocket provided either as I prefer to use a cable tie, and fix the bait to the inside of the trap to centralise it better. I have precut shafts of wood I use to tether the nets to, they’re just large tent pegs really.
Bait up and cast your net out a few metres, hence the added paracord, the weight of the net is normally enough to fix them on the river bed of most rivers I fish in. If you’re finding your traps are drifting down current, chances are there’s no cray fish anyway as they tend to be in slow moving rivers and streams.
I like to chuck in 6 or so traps, space them out about 50-100 meters apart, once all are set I’ll have a cup of tea and a read for an hour. Bearing in mind this is a nocturnal activity, I’d try not to draw to much attention to your activity on the river bank……..
After an hour or two I walk back along the trap line, I’ve cut all my wooden tethering shafts at an angle so the white of the wood is facing the river bank and are set at an angle to which I’ll approach. This means that on a reasonable moon lit night you can see the white of the stick against the dark back ground, works for me so far and I haven’t lost a net yet! I find an hour or two is enough to bring in the first haul. Empty each net and recast them one at a time, once you’ve emptied them, cast the nets, and its time for another brew and only 1 hours wait till I collect and finish for the night.
On a good run in 3-4 hours I can take up to 100 crayfish, on a bad night I’ve had as few as 10, but its all fun and the gear I use has paid for itself time after time.
How you use them is up to you, if I take a big haul I’ll kill them at the river bank, and take the tail and claws off, chucking the unedible head section back in for the fish to have. If I only take a few, then I’ll take the lot back home, and cook them up as a meal for one D is a raw food vegan so she never wants to share. Crayfish can be used exactly the same as prawns, and once they’ve been cleaned up and de-shelled they will store in the freezer just the same.
If you’re going to cook them whole, bring a big pan of water with salt in it to a rolling boil and just place them in one at a time. Beware of the claws, bring back to the boil for three minutes, then drain and rinse in cold water. Serve immediately with what ever dipping sauce you want, just tear off the claws and tail, deshell and eat, but beware of the vein in its tail, this can have some ‘muck’ in it, so just pull it out and devour.
I personally kill them before boiling by using a sharp knife across the body/head joint, this severs the main nerve endings and the ‘vein’ in the tail. Now they will thrash about and carry on trying to walk, and that’s normal, they are notoriously hard to kill by any normal means other than by plunging into boiling water or letting them cool in a freezer for 30 minutes before cooking.
If you look at the tail there are 5 fins, take the middle one and pull it left or right until it breaks away, then do this again in the other direction. Just gently pull away from the body and the whole ‘vein’ will come out providing you cut the joint between the head and the body!
There isn’t that much more to say really, crayfish fishing really is this simple, it’s fun and cheap, and to my mind another source of wild food, also in my own opinion you’re doing the environmental agency a favour, these little pests are destroying our waterways.
R.
