Fishing with Live Crawfish

Live crawfish can be an excellent bait choice for many different species of fish. Catfish, small mouth bass, black bass, striped bass, and many different species of perch all love crawfish. This is mainly because the crawfish are natural to their habitat and it is a food they recognize. Just as people tend to eat foods they recognize as tasting good, fish are the same way. Natural food sources like crawfish and live minnows appeal to them even when other things do not.

The crawfish will stay alive for a very long time on your hook because they are naturally used to being under the water. So when you hook a crawfish onto your line you get the added benefit of having bait that is moving. Even picky fish will swim over to investigate bait that is moving.

You want to carefully hook the crawfish from the underside of their shell but in a manner that does not damage it. You want to leave the hard shell on the bait so the creature can live longer. This type of bait is frequently used by people who are fishing with trout lines or fishing with the floating jugs. Catfish truly love the crawfish and when people are fishing with a trout line they are generally fishing for catfish.
You can buy live crawfish for bait at some places that sell minnows, worms, and other live baits like crickets. You can also set a wire trap to catch the live crawfish from the waters you will be fishing in. The crawfish that you buy will generally be larger than the ones you catch in your trap but the smaller ones make better bait. It seems at times like the larger ones intimidate the fish.

Any bait that you would place in a minnow trap will generally work for the catching of crawfish. It seems that they enter the traps more out of curiosity than out of hunger but fish in the bottom of the trap will generally attract them to come inside. Once inside the trap the crawfish cannot find their way back out and they are there when you pick the trap up.

Live crawfish does work well and you will even find that dead crawfish will attract some species of fish. Mainly the catfish but they are plenty fun to catch. You can even take your leftover bait home and freeze it for the next trip.