Friday, June 19, 2009

"Cashing in on crayfish"

There's a nice story with a Racine slant in the Journal Sentinel Online about trapping and selling crayfish: http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/48567227.html.

When I was a kid, a neighbor used to take me and his brother to the Pike River in Kenosha to catch crayfish by tying some raw liver to a line, throwing it in the water, and waiting. Every now and again, we would pull up the lines and find a few crayfish clinging to the meat.

I don't know why we went to Kenosha, but I guessed there weren't any good crayfish spots in Racine. The JS article, though, highlights a man catching them in Root River. Another great story about a local, "little guy" entrepreneur.

I also didn't know that crayfish are an invasive species in Wisconsin. I know that some people eat them, but we only used them for bait.

4 comments:

SER said...

We use to go all the time down to the river and catch them. I still have my little crab pole in the garage.

Huck Finn said...

ohhhhhh Crawfish etoufe'

drewzepmeister said...

I used to see them all the time Up North.

Timt49 said...

yeppers, when I was younger (much younger) me and my fishin buddies would go down by the dam and catch em, this was back in the 60's..


yeh, I know...it should be "my fishing buddies and I"..


don't go fishin anymore, lost interest in cleaning them, (playing in the guts).

back then the lake was much higher and we perch fished with power lines. It was nothing to fill up a 8 ft stringer with perch.

oh...and my mother was one of my fishing buddies...she used a cane pole.