Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Crawfish, crawfish, crawfish!

Saw live crawfish offered at $1.49 a pound here in Shreveport, cheapest of the season (which will last another month or two at most).

Query: Would it make sense for me to buy a few hundred pounds for my LMB?

Note that I already have some crawfish naturally there, I can see an occasional mound. My dam is in excellent shape, very little leakage and it only dropped about 18 inches at the low last summer. Dam has covering of rip rap down about six vertical feet; deepest part about 25 feet.

I know downside of crawfish is that they burrow & can undermine a dam. Planned on releasing them at far side several hundred yards away from dam, so that maximum numbers would get eaten before they could do damage.

I'm already feeding 1 lb (two 6 second episodes) a day in each of three TH feeders and have abundant CNBG of all sizes up to about 7 inches. Water light green, about 30 - 36 inch visibility (last year 45 to 50 inch), with a little algae (last year zero). Planning on getting fourth feeder set up on 1 lb a day schedule this week.

Any comments, thoughts on whether crawfish make sense? Would I be better off just to put in 100 lb of TP and/or GSH and step up feeding?

I doubt that they would be a problem since you already have some. It would probably be a better bet if you could go to the farm to get them. I bought some a couple of years ago from a Fort Worth grocery store and thought I would raise them for stocking in my bigger ponds. They seemed Ok but promptly crawled out of the water and onto the bank. This resulted in suicide by coon. I called a crawfish farm and asked questions. The guy told me that while they were alive and Ok for eating, they were mostly dead or dying by the time I got them.

Frank, I did a lot of researching local crawfish awhile back and learned most all of our local native craws are Red Swamps. Most likely that is what you are seeing around the pond. The craws were/are raised locally and they pretty much traveled all around. Moving the native craws out or just taking over our area. There is a crawfish farmer on the North side of Cross Lake, just off of 220 loop. He has White River and Red swamps and supplies several ponds in our area. He told me best pricing would be around Easter. If it were me(and it's not) I would add Tp and craws. I can't recall the farm name but take 220 cross over to the north side of Cross lake bridge and take first exit. Go west for about 1/4 mi and he is on the right side. Slow down to see his small sign or you will miss it

From my experince, crawfish don't have a high survival rate if they are chilled in a cooler and then released back into a pond.

Crawls have been a good short term "bump" in our ponds but not a sustaining element. We've stocked them heavy directly before trying to introduce Shad in hopes of reducing some of the pressure. Not sure it work for that but didn't fatter bass up a bit. At least short term. We haven't had any dike issues from the yet.

I think you would be better spending your money on blue gills or minnows

I agree with James.

Do you have a good feeding program? A feeding program with quality feed, even if hand fed several times a week, would probably provide far more growth than forage.

The common rule of thumb is that it takes about 10 lbs., of forage fish to equal about 1 lb., of good quality feed to provide the same amount of flesh growth in your pond.


Oops:. I got this note from Bill D, and he is correct. My old brain was lagging behind my typing fingers.

Thanks for all the great replies! I've decided to focus on growing CNBG in my forage pond & feeding pellets to them and the TP in the main pond. Already have natural native crawfish, so probably money best spent elsewhere.