Where's The Crawfish?

[Al Agnew]

I don't think I've noticed a huge decline in crayfish on the rivers I usually fish. But maybe that's because I grew up fishing upper Big River, where crayfish were always less common than on many other streams due to the vast amounts of lead mine waste, which consists of silt and very fine substrates that choke out the spaces in the rocks where the more common species of crayfish like to hide. The most common species by far in most Ozark streams is the golden crayfish, which lives under rocks in fairly shallow to very shallow water, and often digs into the gravel a few inches. But in Big River, the most common species was a different one, which lives in holes and under debris along mud and clay banks. Which was fine with me when I was a kid, because that species, the name of which escapes me at the moment, was much preferred by the smallies over the goldens, because it was thinner-shelled and had smaller pincers.

As for otters...yep, they eat LOTS of crayfish. But the funny thing is that in a few stream stretches, I've had days when I couldn't catch a bass and was seeing huge numbers of crayfish, right out in the open in the middle of the day. In most streams with a healthy bass population, you simply won't see crayfish in the daylight unless you lift up rocks and look for them, but in these streams the crayfish were everywhere. And people told me in both instances that the otters had eaten all the bass in those stretches...go figure. Apparently the otters were ignoring the crawdads completely, according to those people.

[Gavin]

The two legged otters were ignoring the crayfish...the 4 legged variety would never do that.

[Mitch f]

20 years ago was 1991. I was married that year. DOH!

So, what you're saying is, our distant past was the 1990s? (the 1990s! Really?) The 1980's (30 years ago).

Good grief. Who cares about crawfish. What happened to my life.

Not to make you feel worse, I think Star Wars has been out over 30 years

And Cricket was watching Barney