My definition of the perfect bait is one you can catch fish with or eat.
That limits the field. Jimmy Carter's cousin, Hugh, who raised worms, ate them to demonstrate edibility but he failed with me. People eat guppies and I guess you could do the same with fathead minnows, but leave me out. You can survive on Wheaties doughballs, a carp bait, but it isn't gourmet food. What kind of wine goes with Wheaties?
No, there is only one bait that not only is highly palatable to fish, but also to man.
I speak of the crayfish. Remember Leo Gorcey, the pugnacious pint-sized leader of the Dead End Kids in the movies? That's the crawdad, always with his dukes up, ready to do battle with fish or finger.
Fishing Methods
A sizable chunk of the artificial lure world is imitative of crawfish: jigs, various crankbaits, some flies, and pork or other soft-bodied lures.
Research shows that about 70 percent of a spotted bass's diet is crawdads. Smallmouth bass are equally fond of them. Crawdads dangling from a trotline are guaranteed to waylay passing catfish. Trout look at a crawfish the way I look at a filet.
And largemouth bass? An elderly, stooped old fly fisherman recently handed me a crawdad imitation he'd tied. It was exquisite. A week later I roll cast it under a tree overhanging a pond and a two-pound largemouth blindsided it as it hit the water. Clearly, a bait for the ages.
You will notice that in a few paragraphs, I've called these freshwater lobsters crayfish, crawdads, and crawfish.
All are acceptable. I know of no other bait that has had a song written about it:
"You get a line and I'll get a pole, honey
You get a line and I'll get a pole, babe.
You get a line and I'll get a pole
And we'll go down to the crawdad hole,
Honey, baby mine..."
I figure whoever wrote the traditional "Crawdad Song" probably had things other than crawdad fishing on his mind with his Baby Mine, but who know--anglers are weird.
Fishing with a live crawdad is simplicity. Use a No. 4 or No. 6 hook, and hook the crawdad through the tail, hook point to the rear, so all an oncoming fish sees is Br'er Crawdad with his dukes up. There are hook-up and hook-down advocates. Take your pick. The ideal bait crawdad is about two inches long, tail to toenail, and soft-shelled.
You can force captive crawdads to shed their hard shells by keeping them in moist moss or aquatic weeds and feeding them cracker crumbs. The little buggers pig out, bloat past their shell and literally split a seam. It takes about 48 hours.
While crawdads are an almost universal live bait, they aren't legal everywhere. Wisconsin has made live crayfish as bait illegal on inland waters because of fears that the rusty crayfish, an exotic, is destroying game fish eggs and aquatic vegetation.
Eating Methods
Well, if you can't go fishing with them, you can take them to dinner.
I catch and eat crayfish. I chase them through the shallows of clear Ozark streams where they crouch beneath rocks, glowering at life with well-founded suspicion, and I have tried to lure them out from under the shoreline rocks on Bull Shoals Lake, crawdads so big that a handshake with one is likely to leave you counting your fingers. The proper way to introduce yourself is to grip him with thumb and forefinger just behind his claws.
Bill Pflieger, resident fish/crawdad expert for the Missouri Department of Conservation, has identified a massive crawdad that measures a whopping eight inches from claw tip to tail.
I saw one in Bull Shoals Lake in Arkansas that was so large we both jumped backward at the same time, each intent on self-preservation. That's an eater for man; fish prefer something softer and smaller.
Crawdads will keep well on a hot day by plopping them in a cooler with moss or aquatic weeds on top of ice. As a rule of thumb, use your thumb to judge the suitability of the crawdad--if the tail is about the size of your thumb, the critter is big enough to pop in the cooler. Keep your crawdads alive until they're ready for their sacrificial hot tub.
The crawdad is distributed worldwide (some 500 species, of which 350 exist in North America), but it is in south Louisiana that he is king. Henderson is an unprepossessing crossroads in south Louisiana, heart of Cajun Country.
The individual serving at Pat's Waterfront Restaurant in Henderson, Louisiana, is some three to four pounds. There are two edible parts of a crawdad--his muscular tail, which is far more subtle in taste than shrimp but equivalent in size, and his "fat" or liver, a yellow glop that is the preferred lubricant to butter or margarine in most Cajun crawfish dishes. On the rare monster crawdad, you might get a taste of meat from the claws, but generally they're too small.
Eating-size crawdads run 8-12 per pound and a hungry guy can whomp up on about four pounds which yields about a half- pound of tail meat).
The word "Cajun" is a corruption of Acadian, and Cajuns are descendants of the 4,000 or so Nova Scotians driven away by the British about 1740 who then traveled south, finally settling in the bayou country of south Louisiana. Any schoolkid who has read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Evangeline" knows the story of the Cajuns. How Longfellow could have spun out nearly 750 lines of verse without once mentioning the crawdad beggars the imagination. Why do you think Cajuns settled in and around the Achafalaya Basin? It's because the first sight they saw was a five-inch crawdad waving its claws in welcome.
It is this lowland of rice fields, humidity, and murky, stagnant water that, in times of hunger, I see as Heaven, replete with patois-speaking angels who bring me endless platters heaped with steaming crawfish.
In 1959, Breaux Bridge, just down the road from Henderson, was designated by the Louisiana legislature as the Crawfish Capital of the World. New Yorker writer Calvin Trillan once reported on the Breaux Bridge Crawfish Festival and mentions that the champion crawdad eater is reputed to have gone through 30 pounds of boiled crawdads in two hours, an awesome feat, if true.
Louisiana is the Crawfish State of the World. It accounts for virtually all commercially raised crawfish (and Louisianians also eat almost all of them). There are statistically insignificant commercial operations in Oregon and California.
Life of a Crawdad
Crawdads have a life cycle of perhaps two years, and the eminently edible ones are young-of-the-year. Perhaps 80 percent of a crawdad's diet is vegetable, though the preferred diet is animal, especially worms and small aquatic organisms.
Males in rut (if that's the correct term) grab every crawdad they meet and the encounter can last to 10 hours.
Female crawdads lay from 200 to 700 eggs, depending on species. The male's sperm is viable from two to 20 weeks and as the eggs are extruded, they are fertilized and then stick to the female. When they hatch, the young crawdads cling to the swimmeret appendages for a week to four weeks, then drop off and fend for themselves.
For some unknown reason, nearly all sexually mature males migrate overland during fall rains, a death march. In Spain the roads become covered with the bodies of crushed crustaceans. Noted one crawdad biologist there, "It causes some people a great deal of amusement and others a great deal of worry."
There are a number of methods of crawdad capture, including hand grabbing (which is at the same time the most sporting and most inefficient way to do it). Grabbing necessarily is done in clear water, since it's sight-oriented. Carefully turn over a large rock. Let the swirl of sand or debris clear...and you'll spy Bre'r Crawdad crouched with his dukes up, ready to do battle with whoever stole his covers.
Ever so cautiously sneak up behind him with your hand and, quick! grab him with thumb and forefinger behind the claws.
Works about half the time. The rest of the time, the little devil scoots backward with NBA point guard speed and is gone. Almost as sporting is hand netting them. Same initial contact, only position a fine mesh net (a large tea strainer will do) behind the glowering crustacean, feint with the free hand, and watch him scoot himself right into the net and onto your menu.
A quick method is by bait seine. It takes about three people--one on each end of the net, and one upstream to flip rocks and stir up the bottom. The crawfish, plus hellgrammites and minnows, will swim or be swept downstream into the net. Environmentalists will cavil at rooting around on the bottom, but the impact of crawdad seining probably isn't a big factor in stream degradation, considering all the other cruddy things we do to rivers.
Crawdad traps are productive and need only periodic checking. They are made from wire mesh formed into a cylinder, with a mesh funnel at one end and a door at the other. Bait with oily fish--shad or something similar--and check every day or so. Crawdads will crawl in, but can't get back through the small end of the funnel.
The traditional way, the method mentioned in "The Crawdad Song," is with a pole and line. Tie meat to the line and when the crawdad grabs it, cautiously lift him from the water. So possessive is he that he won't let go until it's too late. Blue crabs make the same mistake and wind up on the same Cajun menu with the same results--satisfied Cajuns.
So, whether bait or food, Br'er Crawdad is a sterling citizen, too long unsung.
"Crawdad, crawdad, you better go to hole.
If I don't catch you, damn my soul."
Cooking Crawdads
Use only live, healthy crawdads. Boil them until they turn red and float to the top, which is usually about eight minutes after the water returns to a rolling boil. Rule of thumb is a gallon of water to two pounds of crawdads.
The typical boil mix is onions, lemon wedges, red pepper, garlic, commercial crab boil, and salt.
Cajuns boil potatoes, sweet corn, and onions along with the crawdads. I guess that's all right, but all that other food interferes with the eating of crawdads.
The fastidious have no business eating crawdads. The only utensils necessary are your hands. Twist off the head. Peel the first three shell segments from the side. Grip the last segment and tail between thumb and forefinger and pull. The "vein," the creature's gut, should pull free as you tug at the tail fin. Dip the tail meat in melted butter, thousand island-style dressing, or hot sauce, and while chewing and swallowing, go for another.
And crawfish bisque (prepared with the yellow hepatopancreas or "fat"), crawfish etoufee, and other crawfish dishes are equal to anything you can do with any other crustacean or shellfish--any recipe for shrimp or crab will work with crawdads.
The only adult drink permitted with boiled crawdads is beer, preferably Jax or Dixie. Kids can drink Coke or Pepsi. Leave the wine in the cellar.
Copyright (c) 1996 Joel M. Vance. All rights reserved.
Home | Library | Fishing | Freshwater Fishing