The Rusty Crayfish, mmm...

[determinator]

Hi folks,

I went crab fishin' with my brother last Sunday afternoon.

When I was a kid, my folks and my younger and older brother would go crab fishing in the summer. We would peel off their heads (this varies from region to region, I'd prefer not too). Get some water boiling with lots of dill in it. Throw in the crabs, and cook 'em until they turned red. A better flavor if left to sit in the liquid a few days.

Well, I didn't go since I was maybe 12 years old. My brother checked out the sites a couple years ago, which have vastly improved due to less fertilizer ending up in the local Branch River water, here in Manitowoc County, WI.

The water, which was once muddy looking, and full of leeches, is now crystal clear. And there are crabs in shallow water. And, even more crabs. Oh yeah, crabs are everywhere. And easy to catch with a hand net.

The water was only 6" to 2 feet.

We got about 3/4 full of a 5 gallon pail in about 2 hours.

We cleaned them, as he heated up the water. I had to go after that, but I got about a half gallon of them yesterday.

Yup, crayfish/crawfish/crawdads/ mud bugs/ are good!

The rusty is a very aggressive crayfish, that invaded that stream. There are maybe 5 different species of crawdad in the Great Lakes region. They have large claws, but the tail is only so so.

Later, any more crawdad tales (tails)?

Kerry

[blueduck]

I caught several good bunches this summer. I love um.

[badger]

Kerry, thanks for sharing with us. I bet those were superb eating! I would love to see pics of your catch. I don't think we have any pics like that.

[Admin]

I second what badger said ;D Would love to see some pics. Isn't it great to do things that you did when you were a kid? That's kinda why I love trapping squirrels. I trapped them when I was just a wee lad cause it was all I knew how to catch. Trapping them now always brings me back to my childhood. Thanks for sharing your crawdaddin adventures with us

Oh yeah, You were right on with your prediction for the swamp bash ;D The weather was perfect and we had a great time. Got so busy talkin that we never boiled a single trap. I love it

[flyguy]

two five gallon pails full of crayfish for coon and mink bait ;D They like them raw

[determinator]

I wish I had some pics to share,

But just have some great memories of prowling the streams like I did when I was MUCH younger!

I used to do a lot of stream fishin', peddling up to the river on my black Huffy bicycle, as a teen ager. Catching rock bass, mostly, and taking them home and cleaning them and cookin them.

I hate messing around with peeling shells and such, so I just chomp down on the pincher's after pulling off the short one, and biting off the tails! Aaarrrgghhh, mmmmm!

Glad the bash turned out, I knew it would, JC!

Kerry

[samdog]

I get pails full of em here too. Got em in the freezer waitin for coon season. Way i see it, id rather catch the crayfish fer bait and then use the money i get from catchin coons with em to head to red lobster and make a feast of its bigger cousin.

[flyguy]

Right on samdog ;D

[rustytrap]

But just have some great memories of prowling the streams like I did when I was MUCH younger!

great minds think alike also did that as a kid

[sstucker]

A couple of years back the wife,kids and I went fishin' at one of our local spillways,we ended up w/ 9 fish and around 80 crawdads. Made for a pretty good meal.

[determinator]

Hi swampers!

I started this thread a few months ago, and was pleasantly surprised to see it resurface.

Some of my best memories of the past summer involve catching crawdads with my brother Kent a couple times in the nearby Branch River. I was laid off from my job that I held for over 6 years, so things pretty much sucked for me. Reliving the old days when my dad and brothers went "crab fishing" made me very nostalgic.

I have since found employment elsewhere recently, and that's a good thing for me. It sucks to be unemployed, even when you get unemployment insurance. It's like nobody wants you for some reason.

This past Christmas, Kent gave me a new net for catching the little pinchers! I figure I'll use a soldering iron to make some designs and stuff on the wooden handle.

I have a couple traps for them that are unused. Since the river is so over-run with them, catching them with a hand net and two people results in about a 3/4 full 5 gallon pail in a couple hours.

Good luck to all who seek the mighty mudbug, and happy eating! ;D

Kerry

[wolverine]

Have any of you thought about saving the table scraps,freezing untill you have a bunch ?

Just cover with water and simmer till the juice gets thick,strain and bottle. Save shells for eye appeal.

Or have you ever thought about going where you eat the bigger cousin and asking for the table scraps and doing same?

Shrimp also, just trying to keep you thinking.

If you watch the cooking channel they make a rue from seafood shells. ERMIL(sp) BAM!!!!! BAMMMM!!!!

That way you have your cake and eat it too(in a way)!

[determinator]

Thanks for the tip on using the shells! I'll have to try it next year.

Kerry

[swamprat84]

check out the cooking section. I brought my old crawdad cookin' thread with pics for ya'll.

[daholloway]

I and my friends get together twice a year just for food. Once after pheasant season and again about mid summer. In the summer we go to our small local lake and set out a bunch of land lines. This last year i got my largest catfish so far at 38lbs. Totaled one morn with 149lbs of fish. Then we go seining for crawdads and have a big craw boil and fish fry! Very good!!! Can't wait for this years! Any really good recipes for the craw boil? Tried a few and liked about all of them but wondering if I can get a new one on the rest of the guys...

[cam]

Daholloway..

Here's a recipe that is pretty close to how I do our low country boils. Sometimes we add shrimp to the mess if we've had a poor year for crawdads (or we've been to lazy/busy to get out and trap em).

We also include a couple of 12" links of Andouille sausage or homemade hotlinks.

www.nolacuisine.com/2009/04/07/crawfish-boil-recipe/

We usually serve about 25-35lbs of crawfish when we do our boils, so sometimes you gotta do it in 2 batches. This old lady down the road has a HUGE cast iron pot in her front yard that she plants flowers in. I call it "The Black Cauldron". Its gotta be a 100qt pot. I'm gonna get my hands on it one day and have the Low Country Boil of the Millenium!

Cam

[patricimo54]

My momma had one of those pots cam, but she ruined it by drilling holes in the bottom so that there would be good drainage for her plants. You might need to be ready with brazing rod and torch to do some pluggin if you get it. Hopefully it is still in tack. I would love to have one of those old pots in good working condition.

[cam]

And it aint like you can find em at antique stores and junk shops...they're always in someones yard with a bunch of petunias in em!

I'd like to have one for boiling skulls in and another for boiling crustaceans and vegetables in.

Cam

[maritimer]

Now I'm gonna chime in with the typical Canadian guy response, What do them little guys taste like? Could you compare them to lobster? or crab? or do they have their own flavor?

[fishleclair]

Dec 28, 2009 23:18:03 GMT -5 maritimer said:

Now I'm gonna chime in with the typical Canadian guy response, What do them little guys taste like? Could you compare them to lobster? or crab? or do they have their own flavor?

As a consumer of both critters as you speak of Crawfish taste just a bit more bitter then Lobster, The sweet meat of lobster cannot be beat by these little guys...

I wonder If I break a hole in the ice and drop a crawfish trap in....Would I catch any? Will look into it when I get home!!

[cam]

It aint in your mind..there's always that taste. But purging definitely helps. I have a couple of 55ga aquariums that I get set up and I dump the crawdads in when I get em back to the house. A few days before we cook em, I change the water, quit feeding them and let them purge. A bit of salt in the water helps them purge a bit quicker.

Down in Arbuckle Mountains in South Central Oklahoma, the crawdads have a sulfur taste to em due to (naturally) a lot of sulfer in the water. Even the drinking water has that taste in some of the towns around...duh...Sulfer, Oklahoma. I dont fish or trap crawdads around that area much!

Karma, Downhome, for finding those iron pots! I'm gonna try to talk this old lady down the road out of hers before I spend what they want for a new one. I do like that 15'er though!

cam

[fishleclair]

Dec 30, 2009 1:12:58 GMT -5 downhome said:

and fish do your purge your mudbugs? lobsters are no different they get purged too.

Never Purged them........Just took them out of the water and boiled them up.....Going to have to try purging them next time....

[daholloway]

Thanks Cam. I'll try it. looks about right ;D

Purging helps a-lot. We always throw the craws in a small stock tank for a day or two. This is making me very hungry for those little morsels of meat!!! Gonna have to pick up a few pounds of shrimp to carry me over till i can get the craws again!

[barkspud]

Maritimer, I think the crawdads we catch here are pretty close to shrimp taste wise. I had a bunch last fall with shrimp mixed with them both cooked in separate batchs. if you didn,t look at what you was eating they were pretty close. IM sure they very in taste from region to region. Fish I catch a few through the ice every bait trap check but only a few. THey are just like lobster in winter. They Move to deeper water hunker down and only feed when we have warm up spells. I find I catch the most of them at big rock piles where they meet the bottom. Hey bottom edge set, but were it meets the mud or gravel bottom. The southern sides are usually the best. Sun shines through the ice warming the rocks getting them active on unseasonaly warm days. I see one once and awhile when the ice is snow covered. Never caught enough to eat but good smallmouth bait. We used take a fish rod put a worm on a hook. Wear a head lamp walk the shore and there eyes glow pink. drop the worm to it and when it grabs it slide him over a net. Get a good bunch in net dump in bucket. Smelt net, fishrod and headlamp kept us kids happy at night camping, we had a blast. They always got cooked up in some form. Never could get us kids to eat them. Now I say bring them on. I got to get the kids out doing that this summer I've gotten to lazy to easy to just set a trap. Man that brings back some memories.