Trapping Big Signal Crayfish in the Pacific Northwest

so I'm out here at the river today gonna try to catch some crayfish and things are looking pretty good it's late in the season so I'm not anticipating a whole lot but the water it's really nice and clear and there's a little pile of brush over there I think we'll go put a trap in I'll show you how I do it all right so these are the traps I use I actually have ten of these I've got five of them here with me today I really like these traps first of all they're not made in China that's a plus I think they're made in Sweden second of all they have these pretty big holes which actually I think is an advantage because the smaller crayfish can just fall right out you don't have to sort them they also have this metal bar fixed to the bottom and that helps them sit upright underwater so those are three things I like about the traps one more thing while I'm thinking about it I use camouflage line to tie my traps black would be fine too I don't like to use bright yellow or orange or even white because let's other people see where your traps are I'd like to keep these things as hidden as possible so that's why I use camouflage line okay so what do you use for bait I use cat food this is just canned cat food it's cheap it's really easy to carry around with you when you're out catching crayfish because it doesn't it doesn't leak as long as it's sealed up it's really convenient it's pretty cheap I know some people use tuna but that's expensive and I just as soon eat the tuna and not not waste it that way so what I do is take a piece of this is just a piece of old wire from a light fixture I took down I just saved it and I can reuse this I just stick it under the tab like that and what I'll do is after we poke holes in this I'll use this to suspend it for in the center of the trap that way this will hang right down in the very middle of the trap so the crayfish have to get in there to get to it that's a mistake I see a lot people just take a can and throw it in there the can will go to the side where the crayfish will just hang on the outside and try to get it so we want to try to get this cans suspended in the now as far as poking holes in this some people use a hammer and a nail I think that's kind of cumbersome I just use this and it's tied onto my vest for probably obvious reasons but just a regular can opener and what I do is I go around and just poke a few holes like this takes us just a second and we're all set so the last thing to do is to open this trap up hang it right here I'll do that now I'll show you what it looks like and we're all set so this trap is ready to be put in the water I see a fish going by let's hope some crayfish find it - okay all the traps are in and noticed that that camouflaged line really blends in well I don't even know if you can really see it in the video but like I said if you had bright yellow or bright orange even white would be pretty obvious but I think we're all set I smell a little bit like cat food which is a little worrisome given the mountain line reports I've seen lately but I think we'll be okay seen any crayfish yet that's where I put my last trap right there just barely see it all right I'm gonna go take a break I'm gonna let these traps soak for about I'm gonna let these traps soak for about an hour and a lake you might leave them a little bit longer but in the stream I think an hour's gonna be perfect so I'm back at the spot where I put in the first trap it's been about an hour and you can see there's a big old male crayfish right on top nice big claws so what that tells me is I guess need to be a little more patient hope he can find his way in with the trap because he's a nice one see another crayfish coming into the trap right now so it's a little slower today but that's a really good sign we just got to be patient okay I think that big male made it in the ground bullets trapping find out the strides what we did boy he's a monster to only three for crayfish in there but look at the size of some of these guys look at this one he's got some monster claws I'll try to give you a better view in a second there he is okay not a lot of crayfish I mean a good day this trap would be half full but you know what to get these big big males like this these nice big claws I'll take it this is a really nice crayfish and he could reach surprisingly far back with those claws so I'm not gonna overdo it but I check that out that's a really really nice big male signal crayfish okay into the bucket he goes and this is a start and see how we do today oh yeah oh look at that know if there's any monsters in there but that's a nice mess of crayfish guessing about 15/20 crayfish in there maybe awesome okay second trap at this location and it's pretty deep here it's probably well I mean for a stream maybe three four feet down with this trap nice clear water okay enough talk pull it up and see what we got yeah a pretty good haul a couple little ones I think I'll try to get those out give that or they'll climb right out like see this guy right here it's about able to climb out by himself same with that one their tails sticking out so we'll let those go let them go back and get a bit bigger but I'd say we got another dozen or so with this trap that's great all right I'll dump me in a bucket and I'll keep going okay next traps maybe pull both these at the same time let you get a look [Applause] not bad not too bad okay cool set this one down I'm gonna try to set this one down grab the next one to show you actually you know what now I'm gonna dump this one out first because I'm where these guys are gonna climb out okay next trap and sorry it's hard to hold the camera and do the same time not many but that one is huge there's a nice crayfish look at that guy and that's a male females just don't get that big that's a male to Asmat in fact all three of these are but that's a nice big big crayfish whoops sorry about the camera work here yeah look at that it's a monster at least by my standards whoops sorry it's really hard to do this and hold the camera well we're not exactly ending on a high note two little guys and bye guys I mean oh no there's one even see him so three just goes to show it's hard to tell I mean these traps were only a few yards from each other and a couple of them had probably upwards of 15 20 and this one three but we'll take them I'm gonna throw them in the bucket and clean up and go home okay I'm gonna show you just how easy the cleanup is and how there are no excuses for leaving this kind of thing in the water so taking this off the trap a lot of the cat food oils have leaked out but there's still a lot of material in there so just pop off the top being real careful that's quite sharp obviously this I don't eat to the crayfish I didn't catch usually give it a good rinse and put it together there we go it's already a big male crayfish attacking the bait I put back in it's nice to see some still in the stream so that's cool okay it's been a great day this part of the stream has been really productive I'll get a final count later and let you know what I got but before I finish up a couple last things first of all be sure you know the rules for the area you're in before you head out here we actually have a limit on crayfish and these are native crayfish and catching so they do that to preserve the resource other places crayfish are invasive and they want you to take as many as you can so make sure you know the law before you head out second of all please please clean up after yourself it's nice just leave the stream looking beautiful like it was before we got here today alright so here's the final result from today 72 crayfish and some are pretty nice size there's a couple more things I'll show you real quickly first of all notice the color on this one this is a big male he's a lot brighter red and his shell is a little bit thinner and that just means he's molted more recently here's another big male but he's been in the shell for a little bit longer the other thing I think is interesting is knowing the difference between a male and a female crayfish in some cases you can just tell I mean that this one is obviously a male the claws are so big but it's interesting to be able to know for sure plus it gives me a flimsy pretext to show you my cool new knife so anyway if you flip it over and look and I'll see use this as a pointer this male has these little swimming legs back here in his tail in the first couple towards the front of the crayfish are very thick you tell these are really thick heavy legs if you look at a female for example here's one in the end and you see they're a little darker but all these legs are really thin they're all kind of the same uniform thickness so that's one way to know for sure but you can also tell the females are little bit smaller they're a little bit wider on the shell you get so you can just tell without having a look but it's always nice to be able to tell just what you have so anyway I hope you enjoyed the video by the way this is my first foray into YouTube so if you like this you want to see me post some more things about cool outdoor stuff to do in the Pacific Northwest let me know I'll kind of go with this idea or not based on the feedback I get so love to hear from you maybe just want to tell me everything I did wrong that's fine too all right thanks again for watching and take care

Channel: Western Eclectic

Views: 204,703

Rating: 4.8491635 out of 5

Keywords: crayfish, signal crayfish, crawfish, crawdads, how to, pacific northwest, outdoors

Id: WpjKAJsMkNw

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 01 2018