Crayfish, catfish and crappie

First, is it pretty easy to catch crayfish, we call em crawdads here in Washington state. Here, if there is water there is likely crawdads. Is it the same in Texas? Are they everywhere in Texas or more limited to specific rivers, lakes, swampy areas and such?

Second, do catfish and crappie eat them? I never see much about them being used for bait but the fish up here love them both fresh and salt water.

Crappie fishing here is mediocre at best. Some lakes have them, most don't. The ones that do you have to search through the trout for hours and hope that the next school you see is maybe crappie. Or you get someone to finally share a spot where they find them regularly. I'm in Western Washington on the coast, not eastern. Over on the other side they are everywhere.

Catfish, ohhhh catfish. We have brown bullheads here, or maybe yellow or whatever they are. Small buggers, maybe 7 inches if you catch a big one. I have gear too catch 50# salmon so I think I'm set for fishing for them but gonna have to learn how, where and what bait too use.

And catching minnows for bait but already enough in this topic. lol


Looking to be moving to maybe Killeen, Palestine, Waco, maybe close the Louisiana border, in the temperate zones but not on the coast.

Texas is full of crawdads , everything eats them , but we rarely if ever use them for crappie
We have several varieties of them and fish love them , in the spring crappie do consume the first hatch or 2 …..
The eastern part of Texas might see some crappie on crawdads action , but we also got tons of them ghost shrimp in the eastern part of the state and black crappie relish them ….

Ghost shrimp huh, how does one try and catch them? Traps, castnets?
I'll have to find some pics and tie up some jugs and flies that look like em.

Ghost shrimp are also called grass shrimp. Crawdads are called crawfish in Louisiana and the average person eats 20 to 150 lbs a year. lol. Go to Google maps and zoom in east and south of Lake Charles La. You will see many fields and ponds that double as rice/crawfish growers. You may even be able to see how the traps are laid out and the push boats that gather them. Price super high right now. About 7 or 8 dollars a pound. I will wait to try some at $6 a lb.

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I would choose Palestine over the others mentioned.

Also I would personally look how close I could get to a reasonable drive and overnight stay in Arkansas.
Hope ya make it here!

Got the traps to catch crawdads so I guess I'll just throw them in wherever I wind up.

Season is definitely different from up here. We fish crawdads April through October here. I see it is Jan through July there. Or is there an actual set season or that's just when it's the best?

We really don’t use crawdads much here , bream tend to eat them off the hook faster than you can put them on and then the worser part comes along …..
Catfish and bass love them….:yikes

Ghost shrimp aka grass shrimp are not easy to harvest and tiny and once again you best hope the spot you use them in, doesn’t have bream or its gunna be a long day ….:Rofl

If they are e4deible, I don't care if I'm catching them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by fish_4_any

If they are e4deible, I don't care if I'm catching them.

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the point was this , you will spend more time fighting bait robbers than ketchn fish my friend

I imagine the shrimp are pretty delicate and crawdad tails would be swiped too. If I do move to Texas I will have to hit you up on tips and techniques.