OutdoorMissouri.com

Table Rock Crawdads

I would have never thought, they make it sound so easy. I can go to the creek and catch several dozen with a throw net. Most of the 'dads I catch are good bait size, but not worth the time to eat.

I know a couple ponds where the crawdads are so thick I've litteraly taken a garden rake, and raked them up on the bank. Big ones go to the boiling pot, little ones go for bait. Pretty good if you let them sit in some clean water a few hours before you boil them, it washes the grit off of them.

Hey Dave,

Try putting some salt in the fresh water. That removes the grit from their insides.

That's what it said in the mag. I got the other day. Those were some big crawdads.

We used to trap them some years back on Table Rock. Not having an actual crawdad trap we simply took a cheap galvanized minnow trap and cut out the opening a little larger so them big ol mud bugs could get in. We tried various baits but the simplest was to partially open a can of cat food. Also worked well with a few bluegill that had been sort of chopped up, but that had to stop when my buddy forgot to completely clean his wifes food processor after the chopping.

My neighbor down at TR caught a bunch of them last fall. He was hoping for bait, and would up with dinner instead. He caught 40 big ones in one night.

A number of guys use crawdad traps and bait it, I believe, with dog food and they do catch a lot of big dads.

It seems that anything oily works best, whether its fish, cat food or dog food. I've found that cat food seems to work best, unless you can come up with some oily fish carcass.
Corn meal will also clean them out, but if you don't suck out the butter, its a waste of time.
Don't cook any dead ones, living only.

I caught several big red ones down on 5 ditch when I was 10 or 11 years old. I was catfishing for bullheads with chicken gizzards. Those big dudes would grab hold and I would reel them in. I skinned them down, mom battered them up,and I ate them like shrimp. Mom and dad couldn't believe I would eat them, but I did it. I must have had 15 or 20 of those big dudes. 5 ditch isn't exactly TR, but they weren't too bad best I can remember.

Let me guess, the next time you get all liqoured up, you'll be trying to convince everyone that you're a big crawdad killin' s.o.b. ?

I didn't kill them. I just caught them. I think my dad did the killing.



Oh, and another thing. Those dudes looked like lobsters to me. They were that big. I had caught a lot of crawdads, but those had to be the biggest I had ever seen. Red too.



Do you want to hear about my frog gigging escapades when I was a youngster? We did most of our gigging on 8 ditch.

Sammich crawdads and frogs.

If your gigging escapades involve leg shrinkage, drinkin' frog pisss, or pullin' your pud after gigging a trophy, please have the decency to spare us.

I caught a few and added extra claws to them to make them look bigger