Crawfish Trapping

[MOsmallies]

I'm interested in trying some crawfish trapping on Lake of the Ozarks this year and I know a lot of guys at Table Rock do this quite a bit... So give me some suggestions on...

- Traps you like (can be bought or made)
- Time of year and time of day
- Locations for trap placement
- Options for baiting the traps

Hoping to get 2 or 3 traps so I can set them out in multiple locations. Possibly willing to build some, but mostly looking to buy. Wanting to try this for 2 reasons... Get some new ideas for seasonal colors so we can pour some craws to match the hatch and possibly trap enough to do a small crawfish boil with the family while we are at the lake house for a weekend. Thanks for any suggestions you might have.

[fishinwrench]

I can make this alot easier, cheaper, and more fun for ya....  Get you some goggles, a snorkel, and a small net.  Swim around the bases of seawalls in the back 1/2 of small coves after Memorial day and you can load up on a whole bucketful of crawdads in a single afternoon.

[Daryk Campbell Sr]

The best tip that I have read, is to use a container such as a pill bottle,  drill holes in it, and hang it from the center of the trap stuffed with your bait.  Supposedly bacon is one heck of a bait, other than a dead fish.  

[Jerry Rapp]

51 minutes ago, fishinwrench said:

I can make this alot easier, cheaper, and more fun for ya....  Get you some goggles, a snorkel, and a small net.  Swim around the bases of seawalls in the back 1/2 of small coves after Memorial day and you can load up on a whole bucketful of crawdads in a single afternoon.

that is a Mitch craw, not a live one.

[fishinwrench]

Having one pincher a size bigger than the other is patent pending. ?

[MOPanfisher]

A can of catfood with holes punched it it does well, as does fish carcasses.  

[vonreed]

Me and my boys did a lot of crawdad hunting down on Tablerock and the local clear streams using Fishinwrench's technique of goggles and net.  It was a blast and really became fun when we could see all the fish holes to fish for also using goggles.  Anyway, we used traps all over and found that chunk rock or ledge rock areas to be best.  Our best areas were within 10ft deep, but I have read that deeper can be real good also.  I splurged and bought the best crawdad traps I could find anywhere.  But have yet to use them because they were backordered at the time.  Terry Bullard traps is the name.   I'm looking forward to trying them.  We used frog heads from frogging and we'd also use perch.  We never tried any of the other baits.

[Deadstream]

Cheap tins of cat food from the dollar store. Raw drumsticks work well. Leftover fried drumsticks also work and can feed you as well.

Make sure you tag the traps.  Don't be surprised if you lose some, lots of jerks out there.     

[Longball22]

A dock with a fish cleaning station on it is hard to beat.  Seems to group them up a bit.  

[MOsmallies]

2 hours ago, Longball22 said:

A dock with a fish cleaning station on it is hard to beat.  Seems to group them up a bit.  

Good thing cause our dock is one of those

Thanks for the tips everyone