I read an earlier message about crayfish. I was just curious if anyone has tried them? Are they easy to catch and cook?

Use the search function on this site you should learn all you need to know. Sorry, I haven't tried to catch any myself.

Yes they are easy to catch at night close to shore. Use a flashlight to spot and catch. Then cut off the tails and devein them. Boil in water and dip in butter. Thats how I like them, poor mans lobster.

How did you catch them?

I've had no problem using my hands - move slow, grab right behind claws. Also saw recommended here, tying piece of fish gut to string and "trolling" along underwater rocks. I also, as a kid, would slowly turn over rocks under water and grab them if they appeared.

I have used a small minnow trap. Its is about one foot around so its easy to bring with. I put a cut fish inside and check it in the morning. Usually get around 20-30 if they are in the area. Boil them in old bay seasoning and use melted butter. If you can't catch fish, craw daddies are easy!

Matro, Sorry for the late reply. I catch them with my hands. They swim backwards with their claws always facing you for a defense move. Just pick them, up they are so small that they do not hurt you. When I was younger I would dive with a mask, snorkel and fins for them. I wired a fork to a broomstick to spear them. Just roll over a rock and you would find them. Then put them in a mesh catch bag.

On our last trip I wandered down to the shoreline with my headlamp on at night and peered into the water - crayfish EVERYWHERE - bigger ones than i saw during daylight hours. Nightime seems to be the best for catching them - I caught about 20 in a half hour. Too bad the fish didn't like them - shoulda had a crayfish boil.

Just got back from a great trip and spent an afternoon turning over rocks and catching decent size crayfish.
After we caught a bucket load I attempted to make a crayfish boil. The presentation was beautiful but the taste was just OK. I think next time I will devein them first, and either boil or fry them.

Matro, Yes you should have deveined them. That is the waste tube on the crayfish. Also try some clarified butter and salt.

Apparently they are easy to catch - our group this year had a few 8 yo kids that figured out they could stick their fingers in the water, the crayfish would grab them, then they could easily pull them out of the water. They caught dozens like this. We cooked them up with fish, sausage and rice with a few spices for a quick fix BWCA Jambalaya - very tasty!

By the way, we did not devein them. We cooked em up whole in a fry pan with the fish and sausage.

Crayfish are typically purged in a salt water solution just prior to boiling up a batch. They sh*t out everything but their brains so no nasty sh*tvein to munch on.
:-)
devein 'em = best advice

Gentlemen, if you want to eat crawfish, do it right. Down here in the South, we do it right.
1. Catch your crawfish whatever way you can and soak them in a mild saltwater solution to get them to purge their waste. Let them sit in the water for about an hour then rinse repeatedly. You don't need to fool around with deveining anything.
2. Get your water boiling in a big pot. Put in plenty of crawfish boil spices (either dry or liquid or both), lemons, onions, corn, potatoes and whole mushrooms.
3. Bid a tearful farewell to the crustacea and drop them in the water.
4. Bring the water back to a boil for 5-7 minutes. Turn off heat. Empty a bag of ice or cold water in the pot to stall the cooking.
5. Let crawfish soak in the mix for 30 minutes.
6. Scoop out the participants and enjoy with a cold adult beverage.
7. A word about the correct technique of eating a crawfish. Twist off the tail from the head of the mudbug. Peel the first 2 or 3 sections off of the tail nearest the meat end, take the exposed meat lightly in your teeth, pinch the tail with your fingernail at the base of the fan and gently pull the meat out of the shell. For the connoisseur, take the head and while pulling a strong suction on it, crush the shell between your fingers, kinda like shooting a beer. Unlike a lobster, the head is the richest and most flavorful part of a crawfish.

You can adapt the directions as required if you want to enjoy them in the BWCA.

Enjoy.

SE

Thats what I have heard it is quite the process because they dirty up the water a couple of times and its best to start over. But does devin them mean to just yank the tail off? I would like to try them some time

Thats what I have heard it is quite the process because they dirty up the water a couple of times and its best to start over. But does devin them mean to just yank the tail off? I would like to try them some time

When we are purging the crawfish we usually dump a 30 pound sack of them in a kid's wading pool or an ice chest, soak them in the salt water for a while and then turn a hose on, drop it in the container and let it overflow for a while to rinse out the waste.

Down here, we don't bother with trying to "devein" them. The "vein" that is commonly referred to is actually the intestine and we have already taken steps to clean that out by purging.

SE

sotaman: If it's in raw form handle like you would a shrimp tail....break the tail from the head/cavity, peel, then the vein lays atop of tail. Score lightly with paring knife and lift out. When I eat boiled crawfish it's a personal preference to pull the vein off as I don't trust the purging process totally.

In the Ozarks we use a 16-20' minnow seine. Make 2-3 passes in the river in moving water that is a couple feet deep, work it to a gravel bar and flip it on the gravel bar and pick them up with minnows. Eat some the craw dads fish with some and you also have the minnow to fish with.