Crayfish

[Simon Grant]

Hi all,

I'm hoping to start fishing on the Kennet this year however the stretch i'm looking at is plagued with crays. What is the best way in combatting these? I can do nights on this stretch so would be good to know I can leave a bait out all night without any issues.

Is it just a matter of meshing baits?

 

[Mark Swaby]

Never had too much good with mesh or stocking wrapped baits,they can still break up the bait.Shrink tube like Korda superwrap is one way,you can also fish pop ups.One method that does work is using hard wood balls or artificial plastic Boilies(keep them in a bait glug) on a hair.You can drill them and push paste into the holes. You need to bait a area close in and fish tight over the top with the artificial the same size/shape as your freebies.I rarely stayed put in one swim more than 20 minutes so crays were never too much an issue.I found that if i put a bait in and got crayed i would usually not get a bite, if the tip remained still, usually there were fish in the area.You could also just use a massive piece of meat and replace every few hours

 

[Darren Broadhurst]

Hi there Simon, I fish the Kennet alot and unfortunately the Crays are everywhere. Whilst I don't use a bait that is completely resistant to them I have found that by super-gluing the pellets or boilies to a hair it takes them a very long time to whittle down the bait. Since I tend not to leave a bait out for more than an hour at a time without a re-cast I find that they never get a chance to rob the bait entirely.

 

[Gwyn Jeffs]

In my carp fishing days the only real way around signal crays that I found to be reliable was mass particles with artificial imitations mixed with real ones on the hair.
The last bait on would be artificial and the stop glued in place.
I managed to fish an actual crayfish farm quite succesfully using that method ( the only place I've ever seen where the buggers would come out of the water in the rain to look for food ).
Never did find a way to deadbait for pike effectively though. Cast out, an hour later you reel in a skeleton - that's how many of the things were in there!

I tried large diameter shrink tube, cages, pop ups and baits air dried to a concrete consistency and they would always end up whittling the bait away, somehow opening the cages or mangling them beyond repair or shredding the protective shrink tube sleeve.

The mass particle strategy enabled me to fish overnight worry free, and as an added bonus everyone else was using boilies and pellets/groundbait, so doing something different didn't hurt at all.

We don't suffer from crays on the Wye at this moment in time...I fear it is just a matter of time though.
When that happens I know exactly what to do..
Plenty of particles out there that barbel are receptive to, whereas the crays seem a bit ' meh '.

 

[John Walker]

enterprise large artificial pellet works, remember artificial stuff usually is bouyant so keep it in mind

 

[Deleted member 1090]

Any one tried tiger nuts but not sure barbel like em

 

[Simon Grant]

Thanks for the replies all. Plenty to try out to avoid the blighters. I mainly fish for carp so a lot of the time I will use shrink wrap on baits but wanted to know if there were any different methods on the rivers.
A friend in a tackle shop suggested piercing a tin of cat food and dropping it into the margins(with a rope/string attached) as the crays will be attracted to the smell and keep attacking the tin. He says it won't stop the all the crays but will help.