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cray problems fishers green the lea

  • Thread starter Deleted member 1090
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Deleted member 1090

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was down the lea at fishers green recently couldnt get through the crays any ideas bait wise other then plastic any info would be great
 
Suffered from the unwanted attention of Ronnie & Reggie myself, & every season it seems to escalate. In my expereince certain sections of the venue are more heavily populated than others. I used to have a "banker" swim ,located on the middle section, that would more often that not provide some action but for the last couple of seasons any bait pesented in the hot zone has been instantly set-upon by the aquatic mobsters.
 
Robert, the only way through is the massed particle approach. 5 to 6 pints of hemp and 3 to 4 pints of maggots baitdropped in every 20 - 30 mins over the length of your session. By bringing the small fish in, the bigger ones will follow (if they're in the vicinity) and this will keep the crays away.

Otherwise you need to re-cast every 30 to 40 minutes at least with boilie/pellet etc. Well-glugged rubber boilies will work, but you need to glug them up for a week or two first.

The problem has got worse in the last few years since the fish kill took out a large section of the population of the mid-sized chub and barbel. Not only would these fish have kept the cray numbers down by predation, but by just being there in most swims, their presence kept the crays heads down during the day.

It's unfortunate, but there's no turning the clock back now.

The only other viable alternative, of course, is float-fishing.
 
Ignore them, they are big problem on the Kennet but I have found that if u use hard baits like pellets even when the crays are on the bait and the rod tip is nodding you can still get a slam round, the barbel just muscle in. I only ever fish 20 mins in a swim although on fishers green I think you have a smaller head of fish.
 
The cray problem is fairly new to the small river I now fish....they were there some time ago, but not in the plague proportions they are now. My experience so far is that in the worst hit areas, even a soft bait like spam will last 20 minutes to half an hour (a 20 odd mm. cube)....and that is with the rod tip bouncing like a yo-yo from the second it hits bottom to the moment you wind in or strike.

I don't know if that is an average bait survival span or not...but I can live with that, if it is....and I doubt the barbel will bother a lot. So...I can only assume that it gets worse in time, judging by the general reaction to the little gits ?

Cheers, Dave.
 
A few years ago there was a big problem with crays on the stretch of the Kennet I was fishing. There was not a spot that you'd put a bait where they wouldn't be on to it in no time. It took a bit of getting used to but once I found a bait I had confidence was going to stay on the hook for any length of time I got to grips with it.

I found that glued or drilled pellet were too easy for the crays to crack off the hair. A 15mm boilie on the other hand, even a soft one, would stay on for at least an hour, sometimes two or more. It would get whittled down over time but i sometimes caught barbel on as little as a third of a boilie, after the crays had had a go at it. They ended up being quite a good indicator of when big fish were in the swim. I often caught within 15mins of the cray activity ending. Sometimes I would reel in to find the bait gone but in most cases I got quite good at judging how long to leave it.
 
Its an old trick but it works as I have used it on Upper Benyons on many occasions,a tin of cat food with a couple of small holes punched in it and slung out on a string.This keeps them occupied for hours leaving your hook bait mainly undisturbed.


Good luck.....
 
richard that sounds like that might be worth a go cheers pal
 
If there are few or no native crayfish in the area you should have no problems using a net to catch 'em. See here. Get a license from the EA.
That way, you occupy them whilst fishing and have a decent dinner afterwards.
 
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On Clacton Pier we used to use a drop net with a fish head tied in the middle which was lowered to the bottom, and then pulled up after 20 minutes, and was full of hermit crabs for bait. Might work for crays. Or try weighting down a couple of fish heads or something similar and lowering them in up stream.
 
Colin Bridger said:
On Clacton Pier we used to use a drop net with a fish head tied in the middle which was lowered to the bottom, and then pulled up after 20 minutes, and was full of hermit crabs for bait. Might work for crays. Or try weighting down a couple of fish heads or something similar and lowering them in up stream.
Click to expand...

It does work Colin, but you either have to retrieve the net painfully slowly (so as not to alarm the crays, they can scoot backwards like lightning)...Or lift it so quickly that they are held there by water pressure (not easy!) Better still is to have a longish net on the frame (bit like a landing net) so that when you lift quickly they are effectively in a trap.

We used to use an old bike wheel rim, with any old net (knackered keep net) tied on with a drop of about two to three feet...stone or big lead in the centre with the bait (dead gudgeon, rasher of bacon...anything like that) and four strings equispaced round the rim for lifting, tied onto a big pole. Worked a treat.

Later on, once we had started work, we made more professional rectangular lobster pot style traps out of galvanized weld mesh....you could leave them for hours to fill up :D The crays (whole small ones, tails of large ones) made superb chub baits...but of course you can't use them for that purpose now.

Cheers, Dave.

P.S

I have just gone back and noticed the link on Pete Marshal's post, which has a far better explanation of the bike wheel drop net (in pictures and words) than my poor effort...sirry irriot!
 
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