Originally Posted by gehajake
That being said, It seems like I read somewhere on a thread on this sight that they are inferior quality of a food source ...

Gehajake, I used to think that because I read it here. But subsequently a chain of events changed my mind. Ewest introduced me an article on Pike in Arizona where there is a rogue population of Northern Crayfish that has been introduced. In the lake with the highest growth, the pike preyed predominately on crayfish in the spring and carp in the summer. They listed the wet weight energy content of multiple species as measured by various authors. Both Northern Crayfish (the kind QA has) and Carp are significantly more energy dense than Centrarchids. Because these values were determined by standard experiments, I elected to change my mind and accept as true that Northern Crayfish are better quality food than BG and allowed the unanswered question that WRC or RSC may also be too. Below is the table of wet weight energy densities:

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... I dont know about that but my CC are doing extremely well, also in an older strip pit that I fished in a lot we would catch huge bass, we never did check any of the large bass but any bass we culled had craws in them and a Strike King rubber craw was their favorite lure, I still fish a lot with them to this day. but that was before the otters cleaned that pit out. they are slowly coming back and we are being able to catch a few again

Although this evidence is anecdotal, it is evidence that crayfish presence does not prevent your CC from exceeding expectations or LMB in that strip pit from becoming huge. They appear to be very good forage for both CC and LMB as your experience exemplifies
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