Just wondering if anyone has had success yet, and if the 'dads are now totally in the shallows at places like Strawberry, East Canyon, Grantsville, etc.? I’m getting the itch to go get some mudbugs!!
I also saw them out in force at the berry last week. I caught a few with my hand for my son to check out. Are there any regulations you have to follow when gathering them? How do they taste?
The only special regs that I know of when taking them are:
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No taking them home alive-you have to kill them/twist the tails off, etc. first.
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Only 5 lines/traps out at a time.
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I think that you can’t use gamefish as bait either (i.e. a Strawberry cutthroat trout)
You can take as many home as you want…
Those are the only rules I can recall at the moment, but I’m sure kent might chime in with others. He’s our unofficial rules and regs guy.
And, as for how do they taste? EXCELLENT!! Like Lobster or crab to me. I like to boil the tails in Zatarain’s Crab Boil (do a google on it if you don’t know what that is) and then dunk the tail (after shelling it) into melted butter with garlic salt mixed in. YUMMM!! I’m getting hungry just thinking about those delicious morsels…
Sounds fun. I have seen traps on basspro.com and thought about getting one after seeing scuba divers in stawberry collecting a bunch. I will have to give it a try. Thanks for the info.
No problem. Also, I use raw whole chicken legs (or other parts of a whole chicken) and they seem to work best for attracting the 'dads into the trap…
Another way you can bring them in (if you aren’t ditching your traps to go fish somewhere else in your boat for a few hours) is to have a trap or two or three out there, but have a piece of fishing line tied to a drumstick and throw it out there about 10 feet out (with the line in your hand) and have a long handled butterfly catching net that you put out there with the piece of chicken. Put the net about a foot or two to the side of the drumstick. After about 5 minutes, your chicken should be covered with 3 or more 'dads and slowly move the net and chicken so that they meet and scoop up it up! You can get tons by doing that method while you have a baitrig out for the fishies.
Hope that gives you some ideas as well, and helps other members on the board, and what the hell, even the hundreds of Utah board “lurkers” as well…[;)]
Look up crawfish nets or umbrella nets (with umbrellas go small larger is not better to hard to manage) they work ten times better than traps. Crawfish traps are very slow great for over night but not day trips. I don’t own any traps I gave them away or made them into something else but have many nets. They also fold up nice for storage and travel. With nets the crawfish enter from all sides not limted to how many holes a trap has. You can lose a few with nets that swim out on lifting but what does it matter when there are 30 in the net when you land it.
If you ask the butcher at the Smiths to save you the chicken BACKS they will. I pay like .19 per pound for them. Lots of flavor for the dads to find them.
If you throw out in the Berry during the day with the chicken on a string method, wait till you loose sight of the white chicken, that means the piece is covered with dads.
If you lift the chicken from the bottom instead of dragging it, more dads will stay holding on while you get the net in place.
When I go to soldier creek we take a 100’ line with a dropper every 10’ with a chicken piece on it(2 anglers). I just keep pulling my 12’ boat along the main line. As I pull the main line over the front of the boat it slowly raises the drop line up to about 1’ below the water where I just scoop the dads up and allow the chicken back to re-enter the water over the back of the boat. when I get to one end of hte main line I turn around and go back.
I can gather 2 5 gal buckets in ablut 2 hours this way.
I then transfer them to a large tub full of very salty water, this causes them to become sick and vomit up all the dirt and nasty green stuff from their bodies, only takes a minute or two. Then I boil them right at the lake, bring them home and clean and eat them.
element,
I’ll try to post a couple of spots from KUTV archives that gives some basic information on crawdads.
http://kutv.com/outdoors/local_story_231171337.html
http://kutv.com/outdoors/local_story_231170938.html
Hope this helps.
Geoff,
On tuesday there were hundreds of crawdads just off the the main marina ramp in the morning. I’ve never seen them so thick in that area!
I have to agree chicken backs are the best bait. Thanks for the Smith’s tip I will use that. I will save my backs from whole chickens from the off season months and use them in the summer. It takes me about 2 hrs to get my fill to on a bad day on a good day 1 to 1.5. I don’t take my boat very often when crawfishing at the berry. But your method sounds pretty cool for a day time method, I don’t trout fish till fall no need for the boat. After the sun goes down they head for the bank and you catch them in inches of water.
I use the salt water trick to but with baking soda also. Thanks.
I was at the berry on friday and there were more 'dads than rocks on the bottom around the marina.