Crawfish trap

Good morning all,
I have been making a couple successful bream traps and had me wondering about crawfish traps and the best place to set them. To start off I'm not a native Louisianan (sp?) moved here from El Paso from the army...probably the furthest you can go from crawfish.
I bought those crawfish traps that look like minnow traps from bass pro's, but I have no success with em' ( used fresh bream).
My question is if there is a better trap to use that I could make? I saw a pillow trap and a pyramid trap and they don't look too hard to make. Also if I'm by a stream and see plentiful amounts of chimneys on the bank is it safe to say I should set a trap nearby? The stream has a slight current from flooding a while back. Any information would help as my Cajun wife loves the little mud bugs but I cant seem to catch hardly any.

Pyramid traps are kinda restricted to water depth, up to the collars! They work good in shallow areas, but being exposed, easy for someone to steal or run!
Pillow traps (what I use) can be fished at any depth! When submerged, hard for someone to find and take! They come in various sizes from 2 foot up, most use a 4 footer!
It's late in the season now, most folks don't crawfish this late! The water gets bad, as in low oxygen, and if the bugs caint come up to breath, you'll have a trap full of dead ones!
As for bait, poggies are prob the best, but fish heads work good too. You can also get dried commercial bait from feed stores that work good as well, with the mess and smell!


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So what makes it not have enough oxygen? If I have a stream with good moving water it should provide plenty of it right? I think pillows will do best and its a little easier. What do you do to keep it down , but at the same time not make it obvious?

They'll stay down just fine. If ya have moving water it should be enough oxygen for them not to drown.
I fish 30-35 traps in a flowing cypress swamp


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That's far beyond my abilities lol, I wish I had the time of day to do that. I'm thinking about 3 maybe 4 traps. Now I'm not asking for your secrets but when deciding if this place is good to drop a trap , what exactly do you look for? Just a nice still spot that's also able to hide your trap?
One more thing about me is I live in northwest Louisiana ( haughton ) so I'm sure the amount of bugs up here aren't near like those in south Louisiana.

Set them at the base of trees , usually with the funnels facing down stream if possible . Leave some trap sticking up above the water so the crawfish won't drown . If you can find mats of floating grass , that's a good area too .

I'm in Princeton bro, just round the corner!!!


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Well shoot maybe I'll have a little success then, when the season comes around again lol

Does anyone have some info on the crawfish "season". I know it goes till June/ early July but why not after? Is the water temp just too hot?

Yea, water gets hot and the shells get really hard! Ya also have a lot of dead loss due to high water temps


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So it'd be pretty useless for me to go out and hope to get a fair share for a family? Should I just build the traps and wait till the end of winter?

Oh, you may catch a few, but it's really not worth it this late!
Best to start in the spring!


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It's my first year here fully dedicated to the Louisiana hunting/fishing seasons. Guess it's squirrel and rabbit this fall, maybe deer, then it'll be crawfish.