Wtb Crawfish

[brian c]

Bullshoals boatdock has some

not Shure what species they are though.

[Jerry Rapp]

The devil is in the details. IF I remember correctly, Arkansas has around 37 species of crawfish. I could probably ID 7 or 8 species. IF I looked at a picture of a Rusty Crawfish again, I could pick it out of a police lineup for sure.

Nature is pretty complicated with lots of inner relationships between the species. We screw enough stuff up as it is. We don't need to lose our native crawfish to the larger more dominant Rusty Crawfish. It might be enough of a change to reduce smallmouth populations or it might make no difference at all or heck it might even be good for smallmouth BUT it almost certainly would be determintal to our native crawfish and most likely other fauna too.

It's been documented to be a problem in other areas. It seems like a reasonable ounce of prevention to me.

I can understand that. If you could provide documentation it would maybe help me understand more. But to me a crawdad is a crawdad. Used to put them on hook with a split shot and catch the snot out of the spots at Ouachita back in the 60's.

[trapshot25]

google rust crawfish MDC has fact sheet on them. Here is address

mdc.mo.gov/.../resourse/rusty-crawfish-fact-sheet

[mojorig]

There is close to 60 crawfish species in Arkansas.

Here is a link from the MDC website about invasive crayfish: http://mdc.mo.gov/fishing/protect-missouris-fishing/dont-spread-crayfish

[Ham]

Yep, I saw that too. Mo and Louisiana are both around 35 species. I quit checking after those three states.

[97procraft]

Last year I went to Lake Vermilion in MN for a week of fishing. I hired a guide for walleye and he told us that the rusty crayfish was introduced in the 90's and they have taken over the lake. He told us that they have killed all of the native crawfish and have eaten most of the vegetation out of the lake that the native fish species use for cover from those toothy predators. The lake was murky when we got there, but cleared up by the end of the weekend and the guide was not kidding. You could look into the lake and see them everywhere. Each rock the size of a volleyball had at least 6 rusty's on it.

On the other hand it was not hard to catch smallies. All we needed was a watermelon red flake tube and it was on. Pretty much each day was 15-20 smallies each from 2-5 lbs. There was also some pike, Muskie, and walleyes mixed in there all on the tube. My dad landed two Muskie over 40" on a tube.