Posts: 542
Threads: 0
Joined: Feb 2015
Reputation:
0
Didn't have time this weekend to fish so we made a quick trip up to the berry to get some crawfish for our neiborhood BBQ. They are looking even bigger, healthier, and more plentiful than last year!
Got enough for the party in about half hour. Was a long ride home at 1AM but dodging deer and porcupines kept us alert for the ride...
[signature]
Posts: 11,130
Threads: 4
Joined: Mar 2006
Reputation:
0
Good size on those craw dads. Wouldn't have enjoyed the drive home either.
[signature]
Posts: 190
Threads: 0
Joined: Mar 2014
Reputation:
0
how do you prepare those mudbugs? I've heard some different methods for getting the grit out of em, wondering what yours is? thanks
[signature]
Posts: 36,163
Threads: 307
Joined: Sep 2002
Reputation:
62
[#0000FF]Utah law says you cannot transport them alive from the place you got them. So a good plan is to clean them and ice them down well for the ride home. They can "go south" fast once they die and should be chilled as quickly as possible.
Here is a page from an early book I did on Utah fishing. Basically it shows quickly twisting off the claws...if big enough to eat...and then the tail. The final step is twisting off the fin part of the tail to remove the "vein" (digestive tract).
Not much meat to a crawdad but if you get a bunch and boil them up with some good crab boil you got yoself some fine eats.
[/#0000FF]
[signature]
Posts: 761
Threads: 0
Joined: Mar 2013
Reputation:
0
Nice haul. Were you using traps?
[signature]
Posts: 542
Threads: 0
Joined: Feb 2015
Reputation:
0
Yeah, since you cannot legally transport live crawfish, the absolute best trick is to camp up there! I bring my huge cooler and fill it with clean water from the campground and change it out every couple hours. I also have a bait bubbler (battery powered aerator) that keeps them alive overnight. In the space of about 8-12 hours, they clean themselves out and have almost no poop veins left!
Then we boil up some baby potatoes, sweet onions, corn on the cob and crab boil mix/cayenne pepper. Once the veggies are done, throw all the crawfish in and boil them for about 5 minutes. One of the tastiest meals you can have up in the mountains!
And we do have traps, chicken on a string works too, but those ways are both slow! We go at night with flashlights, waders and nets. We got all those in about half hour...
[signature]
Posts: 382
Threads: 0
Joined: Apr 2004
Reputation:
0
I know Strawberry is literally crawling with these things, but are certain areas better for others for catching them? Boat ramps? Inlets?
[signature]
Posts: 761
Threads: 0
Joined: Mar 2013
Reputation:
0
You just walk around in the water at night and scoop them up with nets?
I've always done well with just a night crawler on a hook dangled in front of them, but like you said, takes quite a while to get a good haul.
[signature]
Posts: 542
Threads: 0
Joined: Feb 2015
Reputation:
0
We just go to the ramps and drive right up to the water and leave the headlights on! But yes, they are everywhere in the lake and can be caught anywhere.
I have heard of people throwing hot dogs along the shoreline just under the water then coming back a couple hours later with leaf rakes and raking them up by the hundreds but there are two potential problems with this. 1, chumming is illegal and this may qualify as chumming. 2, crawfish start to taste like the food they have been eating, so if you let them gorge themselves on hotdogs, you might get some weenie tasting crawdads!
[signature]
Posts: 382
Threads: 0
Joined: Apr 2004
Reputation:
0
[quote HD7000]
I have heard of people throwing hot dogs along the shoreline just under the water then coming back a couple hours later with leaf rakes and raking them up by the hundreds...[/quote]
That is awesome and something I need to see. Not necessarily the hot dog part, but the idea of a dude in waders raking in crawdads is hilarious. Good idea too.
I don't know if the hot dogs would be considered chumming. But probably. The utah fishing proclamation defines chumming:
"Chumming means dislodging or depositing
in the water any substance not attached to a
hook, line or trap, which may attract fish."
And seeing as I have actually caught a catfish on a vienna sausage before, I'm gonna have to disappointingly admit that hot dog chumming is likely a no-no.
Still gonna bring the garden rake on the next outing though, haha!
[signature]
Posts: 494
Threads: 0
Joined: Apr 2015
Reputation:
0
So I have a seafood problem. Given unlimited access to fish and shellfish, I could easily eat enough mercury-laden flesh to make myself into a study case for the effects of extreme heavy metal poisoning. I saw this post and decided to drive up late yesterday and found that indeed, the bugs were swarming. I jumped in the water in my shorts and sandals and found that the water a couple feet from shore had to have been close to 70 degrees, it was actually really comfortable. Walking about 20 feet of shoreline and back, I had easily 50 bugs in my bucket.
HOWEVER: they're in their mating season and the females have eggs attached to their tails, the tails of both sexes are scrawny, the shells are hard and all the bugs shells are very dirty and will not come clean. I threw half of them back due to size and eggs. They taste ok but having had Strawberry bugs in August I can tell you it's much more worth your time to wait until about mid-July when they've finished molting and are back out active. Mid-August is when they've fattened up good and have more meat and flavor. I'd actually never caught them there this early and now that I've had the early season ones to compare, probably gonna wait until late July from now on.
[signature]
Posts: 542
Threads: 0
Joined: Feb 2015
Reputation:
0
I agree, I like to wait till they are eggless and they do fatten up later in the year. Once the chubs start dying off, they gorge themselves fattening up for winter. This time of year we catch a couple hundred then sort them and throw back around half of them. All the egg laden bugs and juveniles go back and the big bucks get cooked up!
[signature]
