Pass Lake crayfish

In the late ‘60s I ran crawdad traps in the Columbia off docks around PDX, Willamette by and under log booms, various other lakes and rivers. Used the tails for bait for steelhead and sold them to Larry’s Sporting goods and a couple other sporting goods stores around PDX. Had days that I got 60+ in one trap. Nights are best, they are nocturnal. Ate them without purging, only the tails but Swedish grandmother would suck the rest. She also ate entire fish head, including the eye, so there’s that😁The little soft shelled ones are very good bait used whole; steelhead candy!
 
Kado said:
This actually made me laugh out loud! Every 'fishing room' needs a calendar with a pic of these famous women on it. I'm sure a matching one with south Tacoma men on it would sell well for the women in our group.
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The Hunks of Lakewood—an annual bestseller
Mr. September baits up crawdads using his god-given appendages
 
Kado said:
This actually made me laugh out loud! Every 'fishing room' needs a calendar with a pic of these famous women on it. I'm sure a matching one with south Tacoma men on it would sell well for the women in our group.
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Not sure what I said that was funny?
 
Billy said:
Not sure what I said that was funny?
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Well said. Anybody in the soap lake vicinity knows bobbin for daddies is no laughing matter to the mud bug mamas. It's a violent, primal poetry of flesh, Busch light and claws

Genetic studies show soap lake women are evolving the ability to separate oxygen from the co2 in a busch light, storing it in their liver. When they dive deep, they squeeze that oxygen out of their liver like a Weddle seal to dive longer. It's truly incredible, and has nothing to do with a bunch of Hanford materials being dropped in the lake.
 
PSA on crawdads in Western WA: try not to keep/kill the native Signal Crayfish species and instead focus energy on the Red Swamp Crayfish.

Some eeejit bucket biologist introduced the larger red swamp crayfish species during the last century and they are big-time negatively impacting the (smaller and different colored) signal crayfish.

Edit: turns out WA now has more than one non native crayfish species lurking around: https://invasivespecies.wa.gov/priorityspecies/non-native-crayfish/

 
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Bugmeister a very informative post. I now wonder if the Crawdads in post #64 are Signal Crawfish..or maybe Rusty Crawfish. I also wonder which of the two species taste better.
 
Bugmeister said:
PSA on crawdads in Western WA: try not to keep/kill the native Signal Crayfish species and instead focus energy on the Red Swamp Crayfish.

Some eeejit bucket biologist introduced the larger red swamp crayfish species during the last century and they are big-time negatively impacting the (smaller and different colored) signal crayfish.

Edit: turns out WA now has more than one non native crayfish species lurking around: https://invasivespecies.wa.gov/priorityspecies/non-native-crayfish/

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This is great info, except signal crays can get much larger than their eastern us cousins. Those other species top out at 5ish inches, while signals can get well past 10 in the right situation. However, they are slower growing, reproduce less prodigiously and will often be directly outcompeted for resources by smaller, more abundant invasive.

Best way to tell if they are native is a look at the claw, where signals have their namesake white patches. Hint for finding them in murky water: look for white pebbles instead. Half the time they'll be a signal cray claw and you'll never see them otherwise.

@Buzzy has a bucket full of invasives. Way to go!
 
Bugmeister said:
PSA on crawdads in Western WA: try not to keep/kill the native Signal Crayfish species and instead focus energy on the Red Swamp Crayfish.

Some eeejit bucket biologist introduced the larger red swamp crayfish species during the last century and they are big-time negatively impacting the (smaller and different colored) signal crayfish.

Edit: turns out WA now has more than one non native crayfish species lurking around: https://invasivespecies.wa.gov/priorityspecies/non-native-crayfish/

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Thank you for this info! I took me a couple clicks to get to this handy species ID chart:
 
Bugmeister said:
PSA on crawdads in Western WA: try not to keep/kill the native Signal Crayfish species and instead focus energy on the Red Swamp Crayfish.

Some eeejit bucket biologist introduced the larger red swamp crayfish species during the last century and they are big-time negatively impacting the (smaller and different colored) signal crayfish.

Edit: turns out WA now has more than one non native crayfish species lurking around: https://invasivespecies.wa.gov/priorityspecies/non-native-crayfish/

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Feckin eejit….
 
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