Red Swamp Crawfish, Crayfish, Crawdad, Mudbug

I have one of these living in my pool right now! I have no idea how it got there. It will be interesting to see how long it lives as there are frogs and other things that end up there and since it's been in there I haven't seen any drowned frogs floating around. BTW our pool is very clean and blue.

LOL My brother & I as kids used to catch these in our creek -or I guess more accurately HE caught them I held the bucket :) We would take them down to the local dock and sell them!! Nice profit for 2 little kids playing in the creek :)

As a transplant to Kingwood (Houston) Texas from Montana, I have to say that I was a bit shocked someone took me to the Spring Crawfish and Music Festival in a nearby town. They sat a tray of boiled "mudbugs", corns on the cob and red skinned potatoes in front of me along with a glass of iced tea and laughed when I asked for asked for sugar for my tea (it was "sweet tea"). They were rolling on the grass by the picnic table by the time they had explained how to eat. what for me in my Montana youth had been great free fish bait.

As has been said before by other site members you simply twist the abdomen from the thorax like you would with a lobster, peel the tail just like a lobster and eat the meat . Then you place the open cavity where you seperated the thorax and abdomen ... read moreand suck the juices from the cavity. You are eating the fat and roe if any exists when you " suck the head," it is an aquired taste but should be tried at least once.

Living so near Louisiana I guess it is impossible not to have crawfish in our bayous, lakes and creeks. They do well with medium to large fish in garden ponds. It should be noted, we used these as bait for fishing, as I said earlier. It is a bit of a balancing act of size and places to hide. They will eat small fish and be eaten by larger ones. If you can give them crevice in the pond to hide in they fair better with larger fish. They can reproduce easily in the pond environment. And, just think, if they get too over populated you have a great appetizer for you next dinner party.

These guys are easy to catch in the Settler's Canyon Reservoir outside of Tooele, UT. I don't care for the way they taste.
We'd dangle a bit of bologna from our lunch in the water and they'd come running. Just a matter of snatching them out of the water and dropping them in a bucket.

Crawdads aren't bugs--they are crustations! And very yummy to eat! Set out a crawdad/crayfish trap, take home, immediately boil them in water with salt (or Crab Broil if you have it) until there shell/exoskeleton turns colors...then cool and eat! Tear of the tails and crack open using nut crackers...make sure you place plenty of newspaper down on the table first!

At least that's how we do it in the NW! :)

They've been called 'Big Bugs' by some, a common food, the taste lies somewhere between lobster and shrimp. The way they say to eat them is to "Snap the tail and suck the head".
I used to have them in a garden pond I had, but they somehow were able to snag all my smaller fish. I've found them in just about every lake, stream, river or canal in Arizona.
Other Common names are: Russian "Raki"; Kazakh "Shaitanbalyk"; Turkmenian "Shaitanbalyk"; Azerbaijani "Kharchag".