I have been trying to trap native crawfish in and around the Bayou that lays in the bottom land of my place. No luck with the trapping. And yesterday My grandson and I was checking traps and taking down some pop up deer stands, and storing for next season. While he was taking down one stand I went walking through the area and came upon a bog, and when I walked through the shallows I saw some very small crawfish. So small I was not sure they were craws, with out using my reading glasses. We got the fine mesh net and went to dragging it through the decaying leaves and green vegetation and discovered they were crawfish. These must have been really young as they were on an 1/8 to 1/4" in size. After catching around 200 to 300 we stocked them into the new pond where I have some rock beds and FA for cover and food. I am headed back today and try it again. These are native craws and most likely would self stock but I thought I might help mother nature stock my pond. So if your are in E Texas and want native craws in your pond, then I would look now as they are new hatching going on in the waters of E Texas.
Tracy

Aaahhh...spring in the bog. When I was a kid we had about a one square block of very clear swamp with lots of downed trees in it. We spent many many hrs lying on those logs in the warming spring sun with my moms colanders collecting crawdads, tadpoles and many interesting aquatic bugs we had no idea of what they were. Mom wasn't real happy once when she went to make spaghetti and found dehydrated bugs in her wire baskets.
Thank ya for makin the murky memories clear as that swamp water again.

Stocking native crays from the bog may be better than using crayfish from a steam because the bog crayfish are likely to be a better suited pond adapted species.

I used to be loaded with crawdads but a long drought got them. I miss them because one of my favorite memories is a string and a piece of bacon.

I also recall building a wire crawdad trap and catching a cotton mouth in it. A shotgun took care of both the snake and the trap.

I went back out today for some more crawfish. Again caught a couple of hundred of the 1/8" craws. The few larger ones I have caught(maybe 4) have only measured 1". These have to be the parents, so I am guessing these natives will be small crawfish. I have researched for information on Natives of E Texas and have come up empty handed for information of type or name of these. The one I caught out in Caddo lake looked like a twin to the ones in the Bog.
Tracy

To my knowledge which is definitely not complete, I am not aware of any crayfish that have a fully grown size of 1". Is there anyway that you can provide a fairly clear close up picture of the larger crayfish that you are catching from the bog?? A picture of top and bottom would be helpful. I am curious about which specie of crayfish will remain at the small 1"-1.5" maximum lengths.
See this book for pictures of crayfish that may be the same as you are catching.
http://www.texascrawdads.com/home