Many places the waterways contain the highly edible crustacean know as the crawdad, crayfish, or mudbug. As a survival food these tasty critters would be pretty welcome.

Usually in the tidal waters of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the presence of crawdads is given away by their burrow holes. Usually these holes are not too deep and a limber forked stick worked down in the hole flushes an angry critter out - grab quick!

Sometimes, like today for reasons I do not understand, you also see "crwadad castles" of mud piled up over a shallow burrow. Quickly moving the castle to one side often reveals a critter raising its claws on the defense ripe for the plucking.

With time and materials to create them, various baited crawdad traps can work well if placed if slower water near riprap, jumbled rocks, or weed beds.

What crawdad lore can you share?

I like them in the half-and-half plate of fried/etouffee from Ralph & Kacoo's in Bossier City, LA. I used to have to travel on business to Shreveport, and never missed at least one dinner there every time I was in town.

I used to catch them in the creek when I lived in Texas. You slowly put your hand in the water behind them, then quickly twiddle your other hands fingers in front of them, and they'd scoot backwards right into your waiting hand.

Oh man that brings me back to when a second cousin on a 1970's classic roadtrip vacation showed me how to lift up rocks and grab them barehanded. Long before I knew how they were prepared down south they were river lobsters since I grew up on Long Island.
After my crawfish (as I first called them) ticklin experience I learned that a string on a stick with a bacon strip baited safety pin was a guarantee. Traps work too.

Last Summer I had a ball one night with a few good buddies and headlamps in a swanky Penn Valley golf course neighborhood backyard (house sitting) just going back to basics in the creek running out back!
Great fun and eatin too.
I hear the central Valley canals have a ton of mud bugs.

Raw bacon on a string.

The crawdad will grab the bacon, and you jerk it up out of the water. Of course if you have raw bacon, why not just break out the other ingredients and make a BLT, right?

The crawfish traps that are commonly used by non-commercial types is a 4 cornered net spread by 2 wires bent over to opposite corners and tied together at the top. You set out about a dozen with bait (chicken parts or fish bait in the middle.

Now get your fishing pole and a beer and an empty cooler. Have a drink of beer, use the pole to raise a net, dump the crawfish(es) into the cooler, have a drink of beer, reset the net, and move onto the next net. Repeat continuously, net by net, until cooler is filled, or you've run out of beer.

Get the seasonings, a large pot, and a propane burner, more beer, and start cooking.

We catch crabs on a string tied to a chicken part. Raise the string and if there is a crab hanging on, put a dip net under it, then raise the crab above the water and hold it until it lets go and falls into the large dip net. Don't forget the beer. Repeat until you have enough crabs for the meal you want. We usely set out 1-2 dozen strings from a dock.

A guy I used to work with would go to a regular butcher and ask for the rind off a chunk of bacon. He bored a hole in it and ran a cord through it, then dumped it in and tied the other end to something. After a while (I don't know how long), he would pull it up and there would be crawdads clinging all over it. Remove, repeat.

Sue

Perhaps your PSK contains bacon; its absence from mine may be an major oversight!

I do know that once you catch the first crawdad, parts of it work well as bait for other crustaceans, fish, carnivores, and omnivores.

In my youth I did a lot of fishing. We always had minnow traps set out to catch bait. It never failed I would always have crawfish in with the minnows. All we did was take a quart canning jar and a piece of screen wire shaped like a funnel stuck with the small part of the funnel down in the mouth of a jar. Bread, bacon, chicken necks would work well. I saw on here earlier how to make a minnow trap out of 2 drink bottles, I can see where that would work great and will try it soon.