Diary of a Crawfisherman

Prey: American Signal Crawfish (Pacifastacus leniusculus)

Place: Somewhere in England

April

April is the coolest month, as T.S. Eliot might have said, in which it is nevertheless feasible to trap the American Signal Crawfish in England. No doubt an occasional creature can be lifted in March or even during the winter but it is really not worth dusting off the trap and investing in bait (or scouring the lanes for roadkill) before April. Blank days will still occur but with warm(ish) weather such as we experienced at some points in both April 2007 and 2008, some decent hauls of at least a dozen crawfish can be expected (about twenty are needed to provide an adequate meal for two).

The sensible trapper will venture out only when conditions are conducive--or decide that the pleasure of trapping can be deferred until the more favourable conditions of May. And so we come to April 2009, a month in which catches have been distinctly poor, notwithstanding the employment as bait of some tasty chicken carcasses obtained from a local butcher at a knockdown price, along with a few trout heads and tails. So for days on end the trap sat on its peg in the garden shed. Total catch for the month amounted to a miserly twenty-eight. Since most of these were large, i.e. six inches or more in length, they yielded just about enough to concoct an etouff