Crawdad Ban Petition In St Louis

[Outside Bend]

I read that data on the sales, and I asked the gentleman about that, he explained to me, that of all of the certified dealers, MDC only surveyed approx 15%, and of the ones who answered, he believes they probably sandbagged the amount they claimed to have sold. The reason they may have sandbagged is that they may not have wanted to give away their trade secrets.

I guess I don't see how that's MDC's problem. They asked bait dealers for input, bait dealers provided input, MDC crafted policy based in large part off the bait dealer's input. That's how the system's supposed to work.

If bait dealers sandbagged the information they supplied MDC, it's on them. They made the bed, they can lie in it.

[Outside Bend]

This is a very difficult topic and should be looked at from all sides. I think many forum readers concentrate their interest on clear Ozark streams and understand that crawfish are a top food source from many of our favorite fish species. The thought of an introduction of a non native and potentially destructive crawfish species is scary. I have fished with live crawfish literally hundreds of times and almost always catch my own while fishing the clear streams. In fact, I can not imagine an ozark stream fisherman actually wanting to buy crawfish. However, our fishing sport is much wider than clear Ozark streams. In much of northern Missouri the streams are far too dingy to catch your own crawfish and bass fishermen and catfishermen in particular have always relied on local baitshops for crawfish. Please be careful in supporting restrictive fishing regulations that may not inconvienience your particular style of fishing but may impact thousands of other anglers that fish in different waters and perhaps for different species.

I understand the sentiment R, and it's not a problem restricted to the Ozarks- invasive crayfish have been found in northern and western Missouri, too. It is a little tougher to catch crayfish in turbid north Missouri streams, but I've found minnow traps baited with dog food or liver work pretty well in any stream or pond that has crayfish.

I support the ban on the sale of non native crawfish in Missouri. I oppose the ban on the sale of native crawfish species.

The problem is that lots of our native species are the ones causing the problem. You move one species the next watershed east or west, and you may be creating major problems. Species native to the Bootheel have been found pushing out crayfish in prairie streams and wetlands, crayfish from the Black river have been found pushing native species out of the St. Francis, species native to the White River are pushing natives out of the Spring River. Banning crayfish from out of state doesn't solve the problem.

I'm not opposed to using crayfish as bait. Just use them where you found them, and don't move them between watersheds.

[Tim Smith]

The problem is that some of these bait shops dont know where their crawfish are coming from..and there are no constraints to prevent the buyer from releasing those crayfish in an areas where the are non-native.

This is the core reason I can't really agree with the idea that the stores be allowed to sell native crayfish. Crayfish behave in hugely different ways from species to species but the average person won't have the first clue how to tell them apart. I didn't let field technicians ID crayfish species on their own until they had been working with them for several weeks and even then some of them couldn't do it. To almost everyone involved (except the crayfish and the organisms they impact) a crayfish is a crayfish is a crayfish.

Add to that the fact that the fact that a good percentage of people don't really care what damage they do anyway and banning crayfish for sale as bait is probably the only way this will work.

You can trap crayfish in soft bottomed systems too (focus on the weed patches and any bits of hard cover you can find).

Don't worry about debate. It's good to see differing views on things. That's what a forum's for.

[Brian Sloss]

Making the sale of native MO crayfish sounds alright, but there is a problem. Just because a certain crayfish is native to one Mo stream does not make it native to another. The Eleven Point and Spring rivers along the MO/AR boarder have the coldwater crayfish, which is not found in all Mo coldwater streams. Therefore using other non-native crayfish that are still native to Mo would be a bad thing. I am sure there are other examples around the state. Got to go with the ban, but you can catch crawfish pretty easy here.

[Outside Bend]

I thought more about it this afternoon, and I guess I can't figure how the ban is an attempt to put the screws to small businesses.

There's lots of small businessfolks on this board who rely on our state's streams and sportfish to earn a living. Why should a guide's business be compromised because a bait dealer wants to sell crayfish? Seems just as easy to me to say that doing nothing, and maintaining the status quo, screws small businesses just as much.

Like I said in an earlier post I love patronizing small businesses, I just think we should craft stewardship policy based on the best science, not what's best for small business owners. There's plenty of mom-and-pop logging outfits or gravel mining operations in the Ozarks, that doesn't mean we give them carte blanche to use the resource in whatever way that makes them the most money.

IMO this petition has nothing to do with conservation and everything with businesses trying to protect their bottom line. There's nothing wrong with that, it's what businesses do in order to survive. But we shouldn't pretend it serves anything more than their own interests.

[Tim Smith]

Making the sale of native MO crayfish sounds alright, but there is a problem. Just because a certain crayfish is native to one Mo stream does not make it native to another. The Eleven Point and Spring rivers along the MO/AR boarder have the coldwater crayfish, which is not found in all Mo coldwater streams. Therefore using other non-native crayfish that are still native to Mo would be a bad thing.

This is also extremely important. Crayfish ranges, especially in the Ozarks, can be pretty narrow.

Rusty crayfish were in Kentucky and parts of Indiana and no particular problem since they were locally adapted. Move them over the border into an Illinois stream where nothing is adapted to them and they beat the holy snot out of it.

[Al Agnew]

I guess I also don't see why we have the inalienable right to use store bought crayfish as bait, anyway. I've never in my life bought a crawdad. The bass pros certainly catch plenty of fish in the tournaments without resorting to crawdads. There are plenty of other ways and baits to catch bass and other gamefish. If there's a chance that a bait shop will obtain and sell rusty crayfish, or any other species not native to the streams or lakes where they will be used, then I think you have to err on the side of caution.

The only other solution I could possibly see is researching various native species, and figuring out if any of them are so innocuous that they could be used about anywhere in the state without causing harm, and then allowing ONLY those species to be sold. Not sure that's even possible. I do know that we used to seine crawdads out of a little fishless pond and use them on the river occasionally when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure that species was adapted to that particular habitat and wouldn't have survived and reproduced in the completely different habitat where we were fishing them. It's the generalist species, like the rusty crayfish, that are the worst offenders.

[Tim Smith]

I guess I also don't see why we have the inalienable right to use store bought crayfish as bait, anyway. I've never in my life bought a crawdad. The bass pros certainly catch plenty of fish in the tournaments without resorting to crawdads. There are plenty of other ways and baits to catch bass and other gamefish. If there's a chance that a bait shop will obtain and sell rusty crayfish, or any other species not native to the streams or lakes where they will be used, then I think you have to err on the side of caution.

The only other solution I could possibly see is researching various native species, and figuring out if any of them are so innocuous that they could be used about anywhere in the state without causing harm, and then allowing ONLY those species to be sold. Not sure that's even possible. I do know that we used to seine crawdads out of a little fishless pond and use them on the river occasionally when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure that species was adapted to that particular habitat and wouldn't have survived and reproduced in the completely different habitat where we were fishing them. It's the generalist species, like the rusty crayfish, that are the worst offenders.

In my experience there's no way there's enough careful observation out there for store owners and even regulators to distinguish between different species of crayfish.

Also, it's not just generalists that are the problem. Rusties trade on aggression. They succeed because they grow quicky through their most vulnerable small sizes, grow massive claws that fend off fish more effectively than other crayfish species, they evict other crayfish species from refuge, and they hybridize with the local species.

No one would have guessed this could have happened before it actually happened.

It would take a LOT of research to know which crayfish would be benign. We probably still wouldn't know once we were done.

[Outside Bend]

Most crayfish are generalists by their very nature- a broad food base and a wide range of acceptable habitats. The ones that do have special requirements- large boulders, cool water temps, etc- probably aren't commercially viable anyway- bait dealers want to produce generalist species because they're cheaper and easier to raise in the first place.

I wish there was a happy medium, I'm just not seeing it.

[Greasy B]

In our beloved Ozark rivers good crayfish habitat often equals good Smallmouth habitat. As goes the crayfish so goes the Smallmouth. The prospect of invasive crayfish upsetting our aquatic communities is frightening.