The Traditional Fisherman's Forum

A punctured tin of catfood either side of your swim.

Fished the Wey today and had four crayfish. I have noticed that all the crayfish I've caught lately are noticeably smaller than usual.
Russ

The lake I fished last year was full of them,one time in ten minutes I scouped out 20 of them in the net,this year I have not seen any,The only difference as far as I know is that last year the lake was covered by blue green algae for most of the summer,this year no algae and no crayfish,weird,could the blue green algae have killed them off ,I know it can be toxic.

Tizer wrote:A punctured tin of catfood either side of your swim.

How do you get these out of the water? I hope you do?

99% OF MY FISHING IS IN THE MARGINS, IT IS EASY TO TIE A THIN PIECE OF ROPE TO THE CANS AND TOSS IT OUT AND BRING IT BACK WHEN YOU LEAVE.I WOULD NEVER JUST THROW A TIN OUT INTO THE SWIM AND JUST LEAVE IT THERE IF THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE INPLYING!!!!!!

They are a major problem on the Northampton part of the Nene , soon as you put ground bait in they are there . I've fished a few of the lakes around Northampton but so far haven't come across any .

Upper Thames is full of them. Destroyed the fishing.Otters have caused problems as well. What is there to do? Hardly get a good chub on my local rivers now and you can forget Barbel.

And that is what it is like in the Lea Valley,Add cormarants and E E'S to the mix and you can see that the fishing is all but finished,Of course good fish do get caught as you see in the papers ,etc from time to time but they are usually caught by long stay anglers or by the blokes that fish almost every day for the last couple of hours into darkness and good luck to them.If you can only fish one day a week you are really up against it,when did you last hear of a twenty pound pike from the Lea Valley,Its the pike fishing that has really suffered,in my opinion.

Over here we use them as live bait for the Black Bass. Hooked through the last body segment before the tail and free lined to swim about. As long as you don’t let them get to the bottom you usually get savage strikes and typically from very large fish. If you don’t catch them yourself they can run as high as a dollar each at the bait shop too. However ours are about as long as your thumb; the beasts in the photos in this thread are not what swim in our waters. WOW!

Locally I have been infested with river otters the last few years too. They have really devastated the big fish population. They are fun to watch swimming and playing with each other, for a while; but I’d rather be watching my float disappear.

Hello boy ,you say your crayfish are as long as your thumb,Well just the pinchers on ours are that long,the biggest I've seen is about 10 inches,