Crawdads

. A Crawdad is a crunchy little sucker that looks like a lobster. A big one is bout as big as your thumb. Not much meat but lots of crunch. I used to use them for bait for years. Smallmouths love them!

My cousin had a cabin on the Thunder River, near Alpena Michigan. It was right on a point and the river runs pretty fast along his property and fairly deep. About 10ft or so I would guess. Dirty water too.

I have never seen a place with as many crawdads as the thunder river. I was a messing around a boat rental place one time. It was a hot, sunny day and while my buddy was getting bait or something I was a fooling around down by the water. Rental boats were a pulled up on the shore a bit but there was a few inches of water under them. As was my habit from the time I was a kid, I put my foot against one of those things and shoved it aside to see what was under it. I didn’t loose anything under there but I guess it was just the kid showing itself.

I shoved that boat a bit and looked at in puzzlement? :0) Had a shadow under it that did not move when I pushed the boat aside! Took a second or two but, right before my eyes, the shadow sorta dissolved!! I looked closer and that darned shadow was a couple thousand crawdads that were a hiding from the sun. Man that gave me the creeps!! They took on the shape of the boat and looked like its shadow.

My buddy came down with his bucket of bait. I asked him what he had bought and he said, “Crawdads”! Damn!! :0(

Anyway, back to my cousins! We used to go upriver from his place where it was all rocky. The water was only a couple feet deep there and fairly clear. We could look down in the water and see the crawdads all over the place. This is the honest truth! I remember one time I was using a Swimmerspoon which is a all metal lure. It is designed to bump the rocks and scoot along the bottom. On more than one occasion, I have felt a tap on the lure and when I got it in there was a dang crawdad a holding on to the dang thing!! That thing was all metal!! It was hard to fish with crawlers as the crawdads were on it like a duck on a bug! One day I kept a few of them and my cousin asked me what I was gonna do with them. Eat um!! He proceeded to tell me that I was nuts. That was all I needed to make sure that they would be et!

We got back to his cabin and that evening I throwed them in a pan and boiled them! Turned red like a lobster and tasted fine! Only et about a half dozen of them but tasted ok to me!

I got to thinking. 8) I had caught a couple of rock bass that day and they were still in my fish basket that I had slung off the side of the boat. They were floaters by this time and since they were a stinking a mite, my cousin had a fit when I wanted to cook them! Dang wuss! I went and fetched up that basket and looked at those sorrowful lookin’ fish and decided that he might have had a point. I looked around and found a length of rope. Then I tied it to the bail of the basket. I found a stick about three inches long and used it to prop open the lid of the basket which was spring loaded to hold it closed. I went down to the bank and tossed it out into the current, tying it off to a small sapling. I had put a couple rocks In it to make it sink and hold bottom in the current.

Next morning I went out and started dragging the basket in. Figured I had to have a few in the thing! I got it up near shore where I could see it and I was a bit shocked. I could not see the damn basket for crawdads!! It was covered with the things. Had to be a thousand of the little critters! There were the creeps again. I drug that basket in and the thing was about a quarter full! I tossed it up on the bank went to running to the cabin! Yelled to Bruce to bring his pole and some crawlers!! I grabbed an egg carton that would hole a gross of eggs and my pole and headed down to the water again. I wanted all them damn crawdads I could get. I set the box down and flipped the worm, which was a bit dried up from the night before, in the water and let it sink.

Since I was convinced there were a million of them down there I wasn’t surprised when I felt the tapping right away. I just raised the line up and there was a dad hanging on the worm. I swong it over the box and just snapped it with my finger and it dropped it. Over and over. With sometimes as many as three at a time hanging on that worm. I don’t have any idea as to how many I caught that morning before I got bored with it but there were a couple hundred at least. Coulda catched more but my damn cousin wouldn’t get out of bed! Danged it I was gonna let him eat any of my catch!! :0) Turned out that wasn’t much of a problem.

That afternoon after having to threaten the cuz with a broken arm of two, he said I could use his stove to cook them. I figured to just boil them as I did before. Problem was it took a big pot and the only one we had was an old chamber pot. Heck it was just a laying around and hadn’t been used in weeks!! I took care to make sure I got most of it cleaned! I took it down to the river and filled it up. Damn brown water anyway. I put the thing on the stove to boil. Ain’t all that easy doing the chores with some damn city boy calling you a pig, I’ll tell you.

Well I slung some salt in that water and waited for it to boil. I looked down at them dads and they were a crawling all over the place. Sorta felt sorry for what was in store for the little fellas. Man I had a bunch of them. That water started a boiling and I was ready. I fetched up double hand full of them bad boys and dropped them in!! Did I mention that crawdads got pinchers?? Next I got some gloves and catched up another double handful and dropped them in. Can crawdads scream??? My cuz swore that they were screaming but I didn’t hear them.

I didn’t know how long to cook them but figured that red was done!! They turned the purtiest red you ever seen! I dumped them out on a newspaper and proceed to eat them. Easier said than done for a novice I will testify!! They got a black streak down the top of their tail that I really didn’t pay much mind to. Ole cuz went out of his way to bring it to my attention that it was his poop chute!! Man, I ate a dozen poop chutes!! That stuff is foul! Next, ifn’ you pull the tail off you get some green stuff from the gut. How was I to know it would taste like that. It would puke a darned buzzard! Ate about a dozen of them too! A was a bit puzzled because I was sure that them hillbillies ate the damn things all the time!! Hell, they eat things that are alive too but it slipped my mind at the time.

Finally I got it all figured out. Take the shell off. I didn’t mention the first few I ate now, did I? Then you gotta take out the poop chute. Then I can’t impress on you enough, DON”T EAT THE GREEN!! That is all there is to it!

I must have eaten a hundred or more that day. They are mighty good oncet you get it figured out but there ain’t much to them. Takes a bunch.

My cousin didn’t eat any that day but the next time he went up there he made a trap and caught a bunch. He took a pot up with him to cook them in too.

Good eating! 