Crawdad fishing locations

[h2ofowlr]

Hit areas with good mud banks.  I picked up some new traps and typically use canned cat food and poke holes in them.  Or throw chicken scraps, liver, etc.
When we boil them, I throw some cajun seasoning or salt.  Then use garlic butter for a dipping sauce.  Good stuff.

[Carl]

Now I'm getting hungry!   

[Alchase]

Lake Washington has a ton of them as well. You might want to check the regs (page 130 of the new pamphlet) I know both Samamish and Washington are patrolled often.

[mallard79]

Hot dogs work too! We used too have friends who lived on Bear creek. We would cut hot dogs in half and tie a line to the middle of it......lower it into a pool near some rock and watch and wait.....when one would climb on we would slowly bring them up.......it was a TON more fun than using a trap!

[jeepster]

i use whatever i got. salmon heads are great, freeze cans of cat food that way it wont wash away as fast.

i chum the hell out of the water using salmon heads/parts/guts, old salmon eggs, cat food, anything fishy and oily works great, then i just pluck em out one by one with a fishin rod and with a weight and a piece of baccon on the end (dont use pepper baccon, they hate it)

put on some polarized sun glasses and go to town. drop the line in front of em, count to 3 and pull em out

took me about 2 hours to fill up a bucket

[Carl]

I used the string and chicken part technique on Blue crabs in Maryland. It's a lot of fun.  I'm not having any luck here so far.

[carpsniperg2]

If you guys ever want to make cheap traps here is a tip.

Take a milk jug. Cut it at the shoulder of the jug. Take the cap off and toss it. Turn the top half backwards into the bottom half and epoxy it in place. I have even just used a stapler before to hold it together. Then you just put a mid sized rock about the same height as the hole in the mouth of it. One on top of it and some bait inside and you are fishing. I would leave mine for about 4-5 days. Then you just cut the top of the jug with a strait line. Then you just reach in and grab them or flip and shake. The trap is still good to go with a cut in the top.

I use to do it a lot as a kid. I bought a nice trap and it got stolen! So I swtiched to the jugs. Most peole think they are just trash and don't mess with them

[Carl]

I saw that on YouTube. Looks like a great idea. The cheap part sounds nice!

I went to Home Depot and got the wire and zip ties and made what looks like something that SHOULD work. Batting 0 so-far. Just posted more detail on that subject.

Carl

[Tinner]

what's the best bait?

We had good luck with chicken or turkey drumsticks

[STIKNSTRINGBOW]

I used to  catch them by hand, when I was 15, I caught 174 in one day out of the creek in Gene Coulan Park.
I had better luck than traps wearing a Snorkel, mask, and fins, in any Western water I tried, except for large pots in Washington, and Wenas, only times I have pulled my trap in and they were falling out the sides 
These traps were made with 4X8 rolls of heavy screen, cut in half to make one 4X4 square and two 2X4 strips.
 roll and rivet to make a large cylinder with the 4X4 piece.
Roll one 2X4 piece,  end to end, and pull one corner in until you have a 3-4 inch circle (opening) in one side, rivet and trim excess.
You can see where this is going, right ?
Make a large "minnow trap", cut a gate in it, tie a rope and buoy on it, label, and ( buy some down rigger weights, tie float at surface, then pull rope up a ways, throw a quick loop, use a caliper to hook a weight on it so it floats at or below surface so nobody steals it, (they only see it if they are on top of it,,)
fish until it is time to go...
Also, best bait is the head skin and bones, intestine of any native fish you happen to catch, or Steelhead carcass.

[Sitka_Blacktail]

I've got a favorite river in Grays Harbor County I hit for crawdaddies. It's usually good for all you want to deal with. I sometimes use fish spines and heads and tails and guts or chicken necks or liver, but my secret bait is the clam neck tips and guts we save after razor clamming. Usually get a few right off while the current is taking the smell down stream, then it turns into an army of crawdads marching upstream from who knows how far down stream. It's cool to watch them when they are on the move.

I have a couple traps, but it's really more fun to use a throw ring with a bait jar attached. And if you have a kid with you it's much more fun and proactive to make a couple handlines with a chicken neck or a slice of liver tied on and toss them out where you can see them and wait until they are covered in crayfish. Then you test your mettle by seeing how many you can get to hold on for the whole ride from the stream, hanging in mid air and finally shake them into the bucket.

Waiting and pulling in a pot you can't watch is boring for a kid, handlining them is an adventure! To add even a little more fun, we try to catch the ones that fall off in shallow water with our bare hands. That's always good for some squeals and laughs.

When I was a kid there was a good sized beaver pond in the local creek that we swam in the summer. It was also full of crawdads and a kind of fuzzy seaweed that the crawdads loved to hide in. It was really thick in some places and kind of creepy to wade in, but we found we could catch crawdads by scooping up armloads of the weeds and taking them to shore. Seems we'd always get a couple, then we'd throw the weeds back in to let them get more crawdads for us. We didn't need many then as we were mostly catching them for trout bait.

[bear]

Anybody know if they have crawdads in the Columbia?

[shoot-em-dead]

Anybody know if they have crawdads in the Columbia?

Sure do- find them in rocky areas under 20ft deep

[pnw junkie]

we used to fill a 5 gallon bucket with 'dads at Mineral lake.  It was a long time ago, but someone might know if it is sitll good.  We would tie a piece of raw bacon to a weight and hand line off the docks.  That was a lot of fun; thanks for bringing this up, might take my kids 'daddin!!!!!

[jumpin]

Sammamish slew under the bridge in Woodinville.  Lots of rocks. Use Beef liver tied to mono about 8' long with a little cedar stake. Throw out 4 o5 wait til the line gets tight and pull um in slow -scoop up with a net-  Its a blast at nite with a lantern.