I am getting some live crawfish that are going to be delivered to me in sacks that are on ice. What is the best way to get the crawfish up to temperature before I dump them around my lake?

Thanks

I just dumped them in. Some were DOA, but the rest scooted off.

The RSC are tough critters.

This is strictly from a video I once watched. No personal experience at all so use at your own risk.

What they did was open the sacks and place them on the bank right next to the water. As the cradads warmed up in the sun/air and started moving around they crawled down hill into the water.

What John said.

I haven't had any problems temperature wise, but I do seek out areas that have shoreline cover to release them at. Raccoons can do a number on them if they're released on a clean bank.

I've also seen videos of people pouring pond water on the sacks of craws to help them acclimate before opening the sack next to shore.

Disclaimer...I have no experience acclimating "iced" crawdads.

Back in my tropical fish aquarium days when I brought a fish home from the store I would float the bag in the aquarium for 20 minutes, or so, to let the temperature in the bag equalize with the aquarium temperature, then add some aquarium water to the bag to help the water chemistry equalize as well...give it another 20 minutes and then release the fish into the tank.

Since crawdads are not as susceptible to water chemistry as fish, I would think temperature is really the big concern given that the pond water is of decent quality. Your main concern is to NOT change their temperature too fast.

I would remove the ice from the crawdads and allow them to sit indoors for a while (20 -30 minutes) with the bags open. Then move them to the outdoors for a while 20 minutes or so). So long as the critters are moving around fine and moving around more as they warm up...I might even add some pond water to them towards the end, 5 -10 minutes before releasing them in the pond. Just enough to wet them down.

My suggestions are probably overly cautious, but if you have the time, why not spend it with them? I transferred 300 crawdads to my pond last year over many installments from a nearby creek and have not seen but a few since. They are there as there were no predators present...you just don't see them unless you go flipping rocks.

I bought a bunch of grocery store "live" crawdads about 20 years ago and sat them out next to a small pond to warm up. Then placed them in the small pond. The next morning I looked and the bank was littered with crawfish remains. They had crawled back onto the banks and committed suicide by coon. I called an Arkansas crawfish supplier and asked questions. He said that they were technically alive and suitable for cooking but were pretty much dying.