My experience with crawdads has been nothing short of a nightmare. I embarked on building a 1.5 acre pond five years ago. I employed an engineering firm, did compaction testing,and hired an experienced pond builder. As the pond was being cut, I noticed numerous near verticle burrows (ranging from golf ball to baseball size) and expressed my concern to the contractor. He assured me that there was nothing to worry about and we proceeded to finish the pond. Long story short and three summers later, I filled as many of the borrows as I could find with concrete,realizing that working bentonite and soda ash in over the course of two summers had hidden many of them. While the result has not been perfect (I still had to create a drainage ditch sump pump recirculation system),I now have a full pond. All of this work and rework poked a massive hole in our kids inheritance. I am confident dropping a few crawdads in for forage is different from invading space they have occupied for thousands of years. But, I would to stay miles away from those creatures. I hope my largemouth bass will even the score.
