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Crayfish

If the clubs concerned applied for netting licences and only removed females and juveniles while returning all adult males would the big males eat the remaining little ones much as pike do?
 
Mark Anderson said:
Hi men,

Interesting points made on this . Dave , are you saying that no trapping has sorted the problem on your bit of river ?, how do you think that works ?, could they be predating on each other , reducing their own numbers ?. Strange really , as a bit of water I fish has no trapping , never had trapping , and they are a real pain still !. Perhaps a club with two similar stretches could carry out an experiment on the effectiveness of both points of views .

Hatter
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Hi Mark
The stretch of river in question consists of 12 miles of bank, some of which forms part of the river Wey Navigation, ie..where the natural channel and canal become one, and includes various flood channels and streams.
Certain pounds on the canal are infested with signals, and there are stretches of river that run parrallel to the canal with as little as 10 meters separating the two. Therefore it is easy for crays to to walk from one to another if they wish.
It seems strange that the river has not become infested with crays migrating from the canal,..as mentioned the river is not trapped, unlike the canal.
The short period when signals started putting in an appearance on the river coincided with 3 requests from trappers,..one of which strangley came a week before the first report of a cray being taken by an angler.
The crays seemed to be in two confined areas and as mentioned simply dissapeared over a period of two years,..they obviously did not breed successfully, and were pehaps predated on by the usual suspects.
It is a fact that adult crays become cannibalistic, and soon after the May hatch start to feed on juveniles.
Given that this part of the Wey includes a very varied riverine habitat you wuld suppose that signals would find somewhere to their liking, apart from the canal, but thankfully they have'nt. Seven miles upstream there are serious numbers in the river,..but why the difference? [especially since they reside less than a stones throw away! ]
I have known of two different complexes of pits and lakes where in both cases only one pit was infested and the rest ignored,..why should this be I wonder?
There seem to be many questions left unanswered.
As mentioned, a part of the Mole that I fished for thirty years became infested within a very short space of time and there were traps in nearly every swim. If you had a shallow beach in front of you, one would notice long pairs of antennae waving about above the surface at your feet,..wondered what the hell it was when I first saw it! Unfortuantly trapping has made no difference to the problem, even after 10 years.
The really useful thing about forums such as this is that we are able to compare notes as it were and achieve a better understanding of the problem on a national scale.
 
I can't see what's wrong with making a living from trapping crayfish. On the kennet the cray trapper there does a really good job keeping the numbers down, paying 25% of profit back to the club and earning a crust. Much appreciated and good luck to him.
 
Nick Clark said:
I can't see what's wrong with making a living from trapping crayfish. On the kennet the cray trapper there does a really good job keeping the numbers down, paying 25% of profit back to the club and earning a crust. Much appreciated and good luck to him.
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There you go Dave, another vote for the Kennet trapper :D
 
Alex Gowney said:
There you go Dave, another vote for the Kennet trapper :D
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Hi Alex
Whilst I think it important to convince anglers that all is not lost on cray infested waters,[ to insure that clubs do not suffer a serious decline in membership], trapping is nothing but a placebo.
If seeing crays being taken from a water encourages anglers to stick with the controlling club/syndicate, then it serves a purpose, ..but it is superficial, besides it is incorrect to call it trapping, it is farming,..as a trapper knows that every adult cray taken insures the survival of the next generation.
Have a look at 'A Review of Angling and Crayfish' ...Buglife.

Page 23 makes interesting reading.
 
Dave Taylor said:
Hi Alex
Whilst I think it important to convince anglers that all is not lost on cray infested waters,[ to insure that clubs do not suffer a serious decline in membership], trapping is nothing but a placebo.
If seeing crays being taken from a water encourages anglers to stick with the controlling club/syndicate, then it serves a purpose, ..but it is superficial, besides it is incorrect to call it trapping, it is farming,..as a trapper knows that every adult cray taken insures the survival of the next generation.
Have a look at 'A Review of Angling and Crayfish' ...Buglife.

Page 23 makes interesting reading.
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Dave, as an angler I am not going to ignore what my own, and others experience, tells me. And that is a stretch of river where trappers operate proving to be far less cray infested than rivers where no trappers operate. If someone can prove conclusively that banning trappers gets rid of crays then fine. By your own admission no such evidence exists. And to suggest trapping is a placebo is a bit inaccurate to say the least. That would suggest that me, Mark and others who have commented on the Kennet were merely imagining that there was less of a crayfish problem there than other places. It may well be superficial as a long term means of control, that is your opinion, but it is better than nothing. A hell of a lot better than nothing in fact. As I keep telling you I am speaking from MY OWN EXPERIENCE and not about some hypothetical situation or theory. You appear to be speaking from your own experience which is fair enough. You don't rate the effect trappers have, I do. Let's agree to disagree :)
 
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I take it you did'nt bother to have a look at the suggested report, or maybe you discounted it.
Trapping improves a water for between 1 and 3 years then creates a much larger stunted population which may or may not attack anglers baits, but will eat every last invertabrate and fish egg.
I fished the kennet for years at Burghfield in the late seventies and eighties,..it is a wonderful river,and a disaster to see it ruined by crays.
Many of my mates still fish it on a regular basis and have commented on the lack of small to medium barbel,..trapping could actually be accentuating the apparent lack of recruitment. You may not be getting so many cray pulls, but you should not discount the increase in small crays that trapping has been proved to create.
You and I broadly agreed on global warming and Maggie,..but as you say Alex,..lets call it quits on this one..
 
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Don't be so presumptious Dave, just because I don't see things your way. I tried to log on to the site you suggested but it didn't come up. You are very keen to dismiss my views on this yet, interestingly, you offer no viable alternative. I fully accept the point that stunted crays will cause damage to roe and invertebrates. Will leaving the larger crays alone stop this? Maybe you assume the larger crays will control the smaller crays but this isn't the case on the Cherwell. Crays are literally everywhere and fishing is pretty well impossible, for what few fish are left that is. So you recommend no trapping, I think it helps. Either way, if your Buglife scenario is correct, we get no control and therefore no half way decent fishing. I am not going to argue the point with you any longer Dave because plainly we can't agree. What is obvious is that nobody has the perfect solution so we are probably debaiting a lost cause anyway.
 
I'm afraid I could'nt get the link to work,..but if you just google what I posted it should come up ok.
And I AGREE that nobody has the perfect solution.
All the best
Dave
 
What I don't understand is why these foreign crays seem so much more of a nightmare than our indigenous version ever was. I don't EVER recall our crays being quite such a plague, or making so much of a nuisance of themselves. I never fished a water, lake or river, where fishing was virtually impossible due to crayfish activity, before these damned things arrived. Our native crays were a minor pest at times, but nothing on this scale. I know the signals are somewhat bigger...but surely that is not enough to make this vast difference in nuisance values? Is it just that, for some reason, they are able to survive with greater population densities than our native version?

Cheers, Dave.
 
Yes , it makes you wonder what sort of effect they have on waters where they are indigenous. It's not as though they have no predators which is usually the best form of population control. At any rate, add them to cormorants and otters and it's no wonder our rivers are in such an alarming decline
 
Dave, indeed mate, back in the 60/70s i just loved the kennet when i located some native crays cling to roots ect, wherever this was found barbel too would be in vicinity, they made great trotting baits nicked in the tail
 
Dave Taylor said:
I take it you did'nt bother to have a look at the suggested report, or maybe you discounted it.
Trapping improves a water for between 1 and 3 years then creates a much larger stunted population which may or may not attack anglers baits, but will eat every last invertabrate and fish egg.
I fished the kennet for years at Burghfield in the late seventies and eighties,..it is a wonderful river,and a disaster to see it ruined by crays.
Many of my mates still fish it on a regular basis and have commented on the lack of small to medium barbel,..trapping could actually be accentuating the apparent lack of recruitment. You may not be getting so many cray pulls, but you should not discount the increase in small crays that trapping has been proved to create.
You and I broadly agreed on global warming and Maggie,..but as you say Alex,..lets call it quits on this one..
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I did briefly skim read the report (thanks for putting it up dave) and there were many examples of cray trapping improving things for anglers. Although the report concluded that trapping was pretty ineffective there was also the point that no studies had gone on for more than a couple of years so no other conclusions could be drawn. Also that nobody has ever trapped a whole river system so it's impossible to draw any conclusions regarding trapping rivers as the Crays will move downstream into previously trapped areas. The point was made that trapping can improve the situation downstream of the trapping site. Although not viable, a scientific experiment would have controls that would or could explain some of the holes in that review. For example what would trapping every other year do? Trapping at different times of year? And the obvious one of constant trapping over a period of more than 3 years covering a whole river system:eek:

My own experience is similar to the anecdotal stuff mentioned here, trapping helps improve the situation for anglers. As does 10 pellets superglued to a hair!
 
Crays have spread at an alarming rate because they are prolific breeders, which makes localised trapping fairly futile as a long term solution. Year round trapping on a whole river system is the only solution, but who is going to fund that, and how long before someone undoes the good work ?
 
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